Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 09 Jun 2010

I had taken a 2 1/2 month break from extracting marriage records, but I'm back at it again. Today I have added the Roman Catholic parish of Ibrány from Szabolcs county. This addition to the database adds 520 marriages from 1801 to 1894. This brings the Hungarian Marriage Project well over 12,600 marriages! You can search the Hungarian Marriage Project here:

Hungarian Marriage Project

If you have have records to contribute to Hungary Exchange, don't hesitate to contact me! Your contributions will helps others! :)

What's Been Going On Lately

I've been neglecting my blog really bad lately.. I want to say sorry to my faithful readers out there. You know who you are. :)

I've been busy and preoccupied with a few things going on lately. First is my cousin's Bat Mitzvah, which is tomorrow. There's been months of set up and preparation and I'll be happy when it's over. The other reason I've been busy is I've been doing a lot of research lately.

Last week today, I went to the Newberry Library in Chicago with my friend Cathy. That place is amazing! I didn't even get through half the list of books I wanted to look at, but I found so much information and great leads on my brick-wall Howell family. My Howell's are dead-ended with a Hiram Howell and wife Rachel. They were born in the 1780's-1790's and lived in Western TN and finally Tippah County, Mississippi in the last years of their lives. Hiram was actually murdered in 1853! Hiram and Rachel were married sometime before 1810 in Tennessee and I believe they had somewhere around ten children, eight boys and two girls. One of the girls was Temperance, my 4th-great-grandmother. She was married to George W. Vance about 1844 (place and date unknown) and they had seven children, before George suddenly died in 1859-1860. He was only about 33 when he died... another possible murder? Hopefully further research will yield those answers.

I've also been pretty busy researching my Hungarian nobility. Through my 9th-great-grandmother, Margit Berzeviczy who married István Horváth de Perlak, I descend from many large and old noble families of Hungary.. some with very powerful connections. Here are some of the families I descend from through Margit's ancestry. If you descend from any of these please contact me, we're cousins!

*Bánffy de Gara (garai Bánffy) - genus Drusma

*Bárczay de Bárcza (bárczai Bárczay)

*Berthóthy de Berthót (berthóti Berthóthy) - genus Aba

*Berzeviczy de Berzevicze (berzeviczei Berzeviczy)

*Bocskay de Bocskó (bocskói Bocskay) - genus Boksa

*Buchai de Bucha (buchai Buchai)

*Cseley de Csele (cselei Cseley) - genus Bogáth-Radván

*Csúzy de Csúz és Puszta-Szent-Mihály (csúzi és puszta-szent-mihályi Csúzy)

*Garay de Gara (garai Garay) - genus Drusma

*Gombos de Gombosfalva (gombosfalvai Gombos) - genus Tekele

*Haraszthy de Haraszt (haraszti Haraszthy)

*Istvánffy baranyavár és Kis-Asszonyfalva (kis-asszonyfalvai és baranyavári Istvánffy)

*Izdenczy de Izdencz és Komlós (izdenczi és komlósi Izdenczy)

*Kapy de Kapivár (kapivári Kapy)

*Lipcsey de Nagy-Lucse (nagy-lucsei Lipcsey)

*Macedóniai de Macedónia (macedóniai Macedóniai)

*Merse de Szinye (szinyei Merse)

*Nekcsey de Nekcse (nekcsei Nekcsey) - genus Aba

*Ostffy de Asszonyfalva (asszonyfalvai Ostffy) - genus Osl

*Soós de Sóvár (sóvári Soós) - genus Boksa

*Szilágyi de Horogszeg (horogszegi Szilágyi)

*Szini de Teresztény (teresztényi Szini)

*Zombory de Zombor (zombori Zombory)

I've also been working on something for my website Hungary Exchange that I hope a lot of people will find useful. It's guides on how to read and decipher church parish records. It explains how to read baptism, marriage and burial records and I'm doing three records of each of those events for each of the religions in Hungary. There's the Civil Registration, Evangelical, Greek Catholic, Jewish, Reformed and Roman Catholic. So there would be a total of nine (9) guides for each religion, totaling 54 pages of guides when I'm completely finished. At the moment I have 100% of Reformed complete, 2/3 of Greek Catholic complete and 2/3 of Jewish complete. I hope to have it up soon.

All you Hungarian genealogists, please visit my website and submit the surnames you're researching in Hungary. The Surname Database already has 125 Hungarian surnames posted, so check it out!

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 16 Mar 2010

A lot of marriages have been added to the database in the past month. The most significant are the parishes of Tiszaszederkény (Reformed) and Our Lady of Hungary (Catholic).

The parish of Tiszaszederkény has a total number of 1,745 marriages, and I added them in three parts as I completed them. The parish of Our Lady of Hungary is a Catholic church on the south side of Chicago. The parish records available are baptisms, marriages and deaths that range from 1905-1913. I have added 234 marriages from this parish into my database. If you would like a look-up in this church, please feel free to contact me. The microfilm is on permanent loan at my local FHC.

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 28 Feb 2010

As of early this morning, the Hungarian Marriage Project has reached over 10,000 indexed marriages. The project currently contains 10 parishes from 7 counties. I've had one researcher contribute indexed marriages already as well, which total well over 1,000 marriages.

If you have digitized or scanned marriage records from Hungary, please consider contributing them to this cause. No actual images will ever appear online on my website, only the text indexes.

If you would like to help index marriage records that you have, please contact me. I use a specific Excel spreadsheet template to index the marriage records. I will set you up with the template and any other information you may need.

Visit my website to learn more about the Hungarian Marriage Project, my various databases and my forum.

www.hungaryexchange.com

Hungarian Marriage Project Update: 17 Feb 2010

I've finally finished indexing (or re-indexing) the Reformed parish of Tiszadob. I had previously indexed the town several years ago, but that index only contained minimal information.. the names of the bride and groom. The new index now contains page numbers, entry numbers, ages, parents and everything else that fit into the new format for my indexing.

The total count of marriages in Tiszadob from 1786 to 1895 is 2,202. With Tiszadob being added to the Hungarian Marriage Project, the total number of marriages currently in the database is over 7,500.

If you have digitized parish records for Hungary, please consider contributing them to the purpose of the Hungarian Marriage Project. Time and funds will allow me to only get so much done, but sharing your parish records will greatly increase the speed of marriages added to the database. If you have Hungarian parish records on loan at your local FHC, consider scanning 10 to 20 pages in a sitting and submitting them to help the Hungarian Marriage Project. The more help I receive, the more we can all help each other!

If you would like to help index marriages, please contact me. I will send you the Excel template and a view guidelines to follow while you index.

I hope everyone's researching is going well!

http://www.hungaryexchange.com/

nickmgombash@yahoo.com

Hungarian Genealogy

I've been considering the idea of a new website lately. It would be devoted strictly to Hungarian genealogy, and it's goal would be to help others find their Hungarian ancestors.

I'll be creating a surname database where others could register their surnames and localities, in hopes of connecting with others. With the help of a friend, I'll also be creating a forum where researchers can discuss whichever genealogy or research topic they wish.

Now the main objective of the new website will be the sharing and exchanging of records and documents. Any kind of records related to genealogy would be welcome and encouraged. I personally have already created several useful databases that i'll include in this new website. The most important of these databases, a major project that I have undertaken, is the Hungarian Marriage Project. My plan is indexing the marriage records from pre-WWI and including them in a database. I'm hoping to eventually have help down the line, as well. I already have records from four parishes, soon to be five and with an estimated total near 5,300 marriages.

I have't made a final decision on a name for the website yet, but I have begun designing it already. Let's hope it's ready with-in a week! Watch for my next blog for the update on the website name and address.

Tiszadada Marriage Index Officially Complete!

The Tiszadada, Hungary marriage index is finally complete! I began typing the index on November 5, 2009 and I completed it last night, January 9, 2010. Two months isn't bad! Not to mention A LOT of procrastination.

Here's a little information on the Tiszadada marriage records. The Tiszadada Reformed church began recording baptisms in 1761, marriages in 1763 and deaths in 1767. They're microfilmed up until 1895. Over the 132 years of marriages, 1,873 marriages occured and were recorded. The earlier records began as very basic. The groom and bride were named and mentioned the town of origin, if not from Tiszadada. Then either the bride's father or deceased husband (if she were a widow) were listed.

The later on you get in the marriages, the more information was recorded. Ages soon became recorded in the late 1770's. Some random fathers to the grooms appeared here and there from 1775 to 1830, but didn't officially start being recorded until 1853. The bride's father was listed since the beginning of the records. The mother's name for the bride and groom doesn't start appearing until 1877. From then on, everything became more and more consistent. Beginning in around 1882, birth dates were recorded here and there with the ages. It didn't become consistent until about 1886-1887.

Now I did something differently with these marriage records than I did with Tiszadob and Taktaszada. The first time with Tiszadob and Taktaszada, I typed up the records into a table in a Word document. This time, in Tiszadada, I created a template (which I will use from now on) and typed the index in an Excel spreadsheet. Now, I've never used Excel before and I don't know how to incorporate it into my webpage, so I'll need to do some reading. Unless someone reading this has some prior experience?! :)

For now, I'll just give a direct link to the Excel data file. It may open up directly in your browser, or it may download and open up in Excel on your desktop. I'm not sure. But the file isn't large.. it's just text and no images. I'd like to know how everyone feels about the template I used to index the records. Give me some feedback!

http://www.gombash.com/gombash/marriageproject/szabolcs/tiszadada/Tiszadada - Reformed.xlsx

Hungarian Marriages

I've been contemplating the idea lately of a Hungarian Marriage project, much similar to the Poznan Project. I would like this project to cover the entire area of the Kingdom of Hungary during the 19th century. The aftermath of WWII brought on the Treaty of Trianon, which resulted in a massive loss of Hungarian territory. Hungary lost about 72% of it's land. The lost lands were then merged or created into these new lands: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Galicia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

I already have two towns complete: Tiszadob and Taktaszada. With the great advances of records being put online by FamilySearch, I've been able to start the HUGE undertaking of the marriage records for Budapest. I haven't even made a dent yet.. but it's going.

I'm interested in any ideas or suggestions anyone and everyone may have. I'm also looking for volunteers to help index the marriages. I do already have an Excel spreadsheet layout created, which I've been using. Contact me at nickmgombash@yahoo.com if you're interested.