Ahoj One and All, I have been preparing some material which provides guidance in the strategy of utilizing church records to locate ancestors. In the cours of this, I have been reviewing the National Archives of Hungary web site. In this site, is a very valuable discussion about church registers and the difficulties in using them. As most of our ancestors were under Hungarian subjegation for an extended period of time, this information is quite useful. As others have discovered, certain Slovakia (aka, Upper Hungary) records have a second (bishop's) copy remaining in a regional Hungarian Archive. This is admitted to in the Archives introduction text. Although the web site has an English section, which contains this material, I have posted it here for ease of reference: "... PARISH REGISTERS The parish registers are the most reliable and indispensable sources of family history research. It was Pope Pius IV who, as a result of the deliberations of the Council of Trent, ordered the introduction of regular registration in 1563. In Hungary, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church the Council of Nagyszombat ordered the introduction and maintenance of parish registers at the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in 1611, though sparse registrations occurred at some places before that time, too. Regarding Protestant churches, the full powers to keep registers was granted by Emperor Joseph Habsburg II, in 1785. However, at some special localities (loca articularia), registration had begun much earlier. In Hungary, the regular and compulsory registration of Israelite population was introduced as late as the Bach Era (July 1851), but in that case, too, there were places where registration had begun long before that date. The microfilm collection of the National Archives of Hungary holds the duplicates of parish registers from the localities of the present territory of Hungary, created by the historical churches - the Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Calvinist, Lutheran and Israelite, before 1st October 1895. In addition, the National Archives, in small numbers, preserves microfilms of registers of the Baptist, Unitarian and Nazarene small churches. Some copies of registers from the territory of the historical Hungary, existed before the Treaty of Trianon, can also be found in the Archives: mainly from Upper Hungary (from the Csallóköz), Southern Hungary (from Bácska), the Northern Borderland (Burgenland), the Mura region (in Slovenia), the Drávaszög (the southern part of Baranya - today in Croatia), as well as some registers from ethnic Hungarian villages in Bukovina. Public (state) registration was introduced on 1st October 1895. From that date registers have been preserved at mayoral offices, whereas duplicates have been transferred to the competent territorial (county) archives. Before starting a research in the registers, researchers need to know the wanted person's or family's place of residence, religion, as well as his place and approximate date of birth/marriage/death. OBSTACLES AND DIFFICULTIES OF RESEARCH IN PARISH REGISTERS Of course, research is rarely as simple as that. Many researchers, for lack of proper information about their families, find serious difficulties even in tracing back their origins until 1895. If there is no indication at the last known entry of the place/date of birth or residence of the explored/found ancestor, or there are inaccurate data - that is where difficulties begin. These concepts were frequently mixed up and the priests who kept the records often used the definitions of the place of birth and residence, which were not the same in every case, inconsistently. In such cases, the most practical solution is to look over some years forward and backward in the registers of the last known entry, supposing that you are lucky enough to find the place of origin or birth of your explored and known ancestor's parents at one of his/her elder or younger brother's or sister's register record. According to the general practice, in the absence of definite birth/origin information, the great majority of researchers continues research in the registers of the appropriate religions of the surrounding localities. In many cases, taking the last known place as their starting-point, they look over all the registers of the localities situated within a radius of 10, 20, 30 kilometres or even more. This is an enormous work, and even this can turn out to be useless. Rarely but not impossibly registrations of one religion can be found in the register of another religion (e.g. a Calvinist in a Lutheran or a Greek Catholic in a Roman Catholic), as that denomination had no parish or church at the time or it was too far away from there. In some cases, supplementary genealogical sources may help to solve such problems (see the next chapter). Rare family names often encourage inexperienced researchers. The appearance of such a name in another place, county or region, and its unchecked use, in most cases leads astray and more rarely to the expected solution. At the same time, a too common surname (e.g. Horvát[h], Kis[s], Kovács, Nagy, Német[h], Pap[p], Szabó, Tót[h], Varg[h]a, etc.) can be equally deceiving. In such a case, the most advisable is to check such other data of the record as the address, street-number, names of the godparents/wedding witnesses, etc. These can be decisive in identifying the possible circle of persons. Sometimes, registrars used cognomens or nicknames as official family names, or used alternately and mixed actual family names and cognomens. Inaccurate, imperfect or missing register items can also put an end to a research or at least can make it extremely difficult. As mentioned above, in the 19th century and earlier, registration happened by oral declaration. As a result, especially in the case of outlandish surnames (German, Polish, Slovak, Croat, etc.) mis-spelling was very frequent. There are instances where a certain person's surname is differently spelt whenever it appears in the registers. Sometimes, the registration of a new-born baby had simply been missed out from the register. If a village or small farm lay far away from the parish-church, the baby was weakling and on top of it all there was a cold winter and huge snow, then the midwife fleetingly baptized the baby. If the parents later forgot to announce all this to the parish priest, the baby's birth simply could not appear in the register. Wars, revolutions and other unusual events also affected the accuracy of registrations. This way many persons were registered as legally dead 10-15 years after the actual date of their death, usually with the date and place where eyewitnesses had seen them to die in battle or last seen them alive. Even so, many of them were missed out from the registers of deaths and disappeared in the storms of history. Sometimes whole pages or years are missing from parish registers as a result of fires, floods or just for the lack of priests. If a parish priest died and there was no chaplain, registration stopped. Until the middle of the 19th century the parents of newly married couples were rarely indicated in the registers. For example, István Kiss, (20) and Anna Varga, (19) got married on 27 October 1842. Let us presume that, between 1822 and 1823, 3 Anna Varga-s and 4 István Kiss-s were born in the same town or village. As there is no information about the young couple's parents at the marriage registration, in the absence of identification data (e.g. street name, street-number, godparents, etc.) the research can stall. Registers of deaths can still be looked over to exclude some of the persons with the same names who possibly died before the date of the marriage. From the 80s and 70s of the 18th century backwards, there were frequent inaccuracies in the registrations of births, as well. Usually, the mother's family name was not recorded. For example, István (Stephanus), born on 15 August 1783; parents: Péter Sípos (Petrus) and Anna. In such cases, the researcher should search for the possible brothers and sisters of István in the registers of births created before and after 1783, supposing that, after all, at one of their records the family name of the mother appears. If this does not lead to the expected result, one should search for the marriage registration of Péter Sípos and Anna. If you have good luck and find it, usually there must be indication of the bride's family name. Even so, you can still find more marriages of persons with the same names. In that case, the "real" couple must be identified by means of other registry items. Similar inaccuracies may be found in early registers of marriages and deaths, too (e.g. on 2nd August 1775, János Farkas (Joannes) and Ilona (Helena) got married). When, at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, churches switched over from continuous registration to the registration with tables and columns, such inefficiencies became less frequent but did not completely disappear. As a general characteristic, the older the registers are, the more inaccurate they are, the less data they contain and the more difficult they are to read." ______________ Bill Tarkulich