Hungary Beginning Research

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Introduction
Begin with family and home sources. Look for names, dates, and places on certificates, family Bibles, obituaries, diaries, and similar sources. Ask your relatives for any additional information they may have. It's likely that your second cousin, great-aunt, or other relative already has some family information. Organize the information you find, and record it on pedigree charts and family group records.

Select a specific relative or ancestor born in Hungary for whom you know at least a name, the village or parish where he or she lived in Hungary, and an approximate date when he or she was born there. It is also very helpful to know the names of other family members born in Hungary.

As you look over your family group records, or pedigree charts, ask yourself “What do I want to find next?” Common goals might be:
 * The last person on a specific line of your pedigree chart
 * A missing parent on the family group record
 * A gap between the birth years of the children on a family group record (a wide enough gap that there may be missing children in between siblings)
 * Finding the last children to the parents (during the mothers’ child bearing years)
 * To find the birth date and place for an individual listed on the family group record without one
 * Locating the marriage date and place for the parents on a family group record

Before you start
Before doing Hungarian family history research, you will need to find:
 * The actual name of an ancestor
 * The date of birth, marriage, and death
 * The place of origin
 * The religion of an ancestor

Tips:
 * You can calculate an approximate date from other information you know. A birth date can be calculated from a persons age.
 * If you do not know where the event took place, back up to the place where you have some record of him or her and work from there.

Determine the actual name of an ancestor
A serious problem for some researchers is to determine the actual name of their immigrant ancestor. Some ancestors in their eagerness to be assimilated into American culture, traded their dificult foreign names for American names. This occured often with given names and to a lesser extent with surnames.

To learn more about Hungarian given names and their English equivalents see Personal Names.

Determine the date of birth, marriage, and death
If you cannot find an exact date, you may estimate dates based on other information. You need at least the approximate year of an event. You may use standard genealogical approximation. From a marriage date, you can estimate that a man was married at age 25 and a woman at age 21. You can also estimate that a first child was born one year after the parent's marriage and that subsequent children were born every 2 years after that.

Determine the place of origin
In Hungary, most records used in family history research are kept on a town or parish level. Therefore the exact town of origin must be known before research in Hungarian records can begin. Most of the time, the Hungarian place of origin is found in sources created in the country of immigration. These records should be searched for the ancestor, possible relatives, and other associated persons. If you do not know the place of origin in Hungary see Determining a Place of Origin in Hungary for sources that may give you that information.

Hungarian place names are often mispelled in American sources. Difficult names were shortened and diacritic marks ommitted. A gazetter, which is defined as a geographical dictionary, is an essential tool for identifying places. Look up your place name in the gazetteer to be sure that it is spelled correctly.

To learn about several important gazetters for Hungary, including instructions and examples, see Gazetteers.

Locate the ancestral home
After you have determined the correct name of the town from which your ancestor emigrated, you must still determine its location. Many Hungarian localities have similar names that may be easily confused. In addition, there are place names preceded by an adjective and places followed by a description. Also, Hungarian grammatical endings can change an actual place name.

Use gazetteer to locate the place your ancestor came from and to determine the location of the parish or synagogue where records were kept.

Determine the religion of an ancestor
Until the 1900s, vital records were kept by church parishes or Jewish congregations. The records of different religions were kept separately. If you are not sure of your ancestor's religion, start by searching Roman-Catholic records. Catholicism was the dominant religion in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. No religion of an ancestor is needed for research in the civil registration records.

Determine the record keeping jurisdiction
Not every village in Hungary had its own parish. Often, several smaller villages belonged to one parish. Use gazetteer to determine the location of the parish or synagogue where records were kept. Once you have determined the location of the church or synagogue, use the Family History Library Catalog to get the film numbers of the available records. You can then order the appropriate films.

Find your ancestor in the records
The best sources of genealogical information in Hungary are the church records kept by the local parishes. The Family History Library has microfilmed records from Hungary. Use the Family History Library Catalog to determine what records are available for the locality.

Research by mail
Please refer to the Letter Writing Guide for detailed information.