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City Archives
Once you have completed your researches in the National Archives, if your ancestors are one of those locals who came to Budapest seeking work in the late 1800s and early 1900s, you might wish to pay a visit to the Budapest City Archives. Situated at Leonardo de Vinci Street, number 6, well hidden behind an enormous block of old flats, the City Archives are open 10.00am to 4.00pm, but the specialist archivists are not on call every day. There is one English speaker there, Andreas Horvath, and he will answer enquiries such as the time at which each archivist is present and what their specialities are, and will act as translator if you are working with him in person.

They have a few City Directories, but are mainly concerned with keeping the records of the city administration, most usefully the licences issued from the 1890s to all those who wished to open a business enterprise in the burgeoning city. There are two sets of files, for smaller businesses and larger ones; that included factory premises or workshops.

If you are actually sure of your ancestor's occupation, they also hold what remains of the City Guild records. It is therefore possible to track a certain amount of apprenticeships down for instance and, in limited instances, the careers of certain tradesmen like carpenters. There are a limited amount of school records left there as well, but unfortunately I did not have time to look at them and therefore do not know exactly what they consist of, apart from the obvious class lists.

City Directories

The best place to find City Directories is in the main City Library off Barröss Street. It is called Fövárosi Szabó Ervin Könuytár and is situated at 1 Szabó Ervin Ter. Make sure you go armed with a Hungarian dictionary because, of course, the directory is in two parts, the first part an alphabetical list of the residents of the city, excluding the peasants and those with absolutely no money, and the second list is that of trades and professions; so you will need to know what the Hungarian is for carpenter for instance. There are two types of directories, one for private individual and business owners, which commence in 1885 and run to 1928. They are kept for every second year. The second set of directories are for civil servants and city administrators and are dated 1878 to 1945 and are more comprehensive.

Budapest's Germanic population had their own directory. Addressen Kalender und Strassen Kalender begins in 1805 and gradually incorporates other non Germans.

These are very useful finding aids, because the addresses include the district where your subjects lived and will therefore lead you to the correct district matrical's office if you are looking for births, deaths and marriages after 1895.

District Bureaus
However, a word of warning, they are difficult to use because, unless you can show a direct relationship, the records remain confidential for 90 years. The local offices will undertake a five year search for you on the spot but not by mail. You cannot appoint a researcher to do this as they are not relations. If you come, try and do the work on a Monday or a Wednesday between 8.00am and 4.00pm, but be warned, the offices have different opening hours, the registrars only common days being the aforementioned Mondays and Wednesdays. Avoid Tuesdays and weekends altogether.

Further Investigation
This leaves several avenues of research uncompleted, wills and cemetery records. I understand from a fellow researcher that graves are rented for 25 years, at which point, if the contract is not renewed, the bodies are transferred to a communal unmarked grave in the corner of the cemetery. Many cemeteries have been taken over by private enterprise who do not hold comprehensive records, other than of financial matters.

In the smaller villages everyone knows where their family grave is and records have not been kept as they were considered unnecessary. Most families had only a wooden marker and many have disintegrated.

Wills are stored at the Polgarmesteri Hivatal, but space is at a premium so many have been destroyed.

Military Men

If you find yourself needing to trace an ancestor who was a career soldier, the Archives of Military History in Budapest accept (and will reply to) enquiries in English. Hadtortenelmi leveltar (Archives of Military History) H-1250 Budapest, I. Kapisztran ter 2, Hungary. No e-mail at present.

Other Records
In recent times the Mormon Church have filmed other records besides the parish registers. A book published in America by Everton Publishers, entitled 'A Handy Guide to Hungarian Genealogical Records' by Jared H. Suess, contains a list of them, including Muster Rolls from the 19th century, Grants of Nobility from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Land Registration records of 1828, a few scattered census records taken in 1869 and the census of the Jews of 1848. The book can be ordered by writing to Everton Publishers Inc. at PO Box 368, Logan, Utah 84321.

As all these records are available through the L.D.S. Church, it is a useful guide to have as it also provides you with Hungarian, Latin and German word lists and information on the history of the country.

Here are the addresses of all the Mormon Family History Centres in the UK, all the Mormon Family History Centres in the US and the Mormon Family History Centres in the rest of the world. Gordon Hillman's The Genealogist Web Page contains a Guide to Researching at LDS Family History Centres which may be useful if you are just starting out.

However, even after reading Suess' book, and knowing that the records were available to me in this country, I still felt the urge to visit the land of my ancestors and explore the towns and villages where they grew up. Nothing can beat first hand experience. This is something of what happened when I went: Grand Mama Came from Pápa (article).

Upper Hungary (Slovakia)

One of the problems you are going to run into in researching Hungarian family history is the fact that Upper Hungary was given away to Czechoslovakia at the end of the First World War. Once the Slovaks became in the majority in the Country, one of their first acts was to change the names of all the towns and villages to Slovak names. Split at the Treaty of Trianon, Komárom is prime example. Once one town, the part on the south bank of the Danube is Hungarian and on the north, Slovakian and renamed Komárno. The town has continued to thrive as a border crossing.

This can present you with a bit of a problem if you are unaware of the old and new names, this can be complicated further by the fact that German immigrants into certain areas gave a third name to some of the towns and villages, that frequently does not resemble the Slovakian name at all.

Using Maps
The way to overcome this problem is to buy a map which gives both names and the best one I have found is produced by Di-Map, H/1196, Budapest, Báthory U. 104. Reading through this you will discover that the capital of Slovakia, once upon a time the capital of Hungary when the Turks occupied the middle of the country, is known today as Bratislava, was known to the Hungarians as Pozsony and to the Germans as Pressburg. This is a well-known example, a less-well-known one would be the town of Nové Zámky. When Hungarian it was known as Ersekújvár and the Germans called it Neuhäusel. The Di-Map of Slovakia is indexed and it is therefore easy to find any particular place.

On the Net your life is made easier by several of the organisations listed in the links at the end of this article. For instance, there are maps at this site: Eastern Slovakia, Slovak and Carpo-Rusyn Genealogy

Slovakian Parish Registers
The other thing you will find about Upper Hungary is that their records have not been microfilmed and it is necessary to visit Slovakia itself as you will not find the records either in the Church of the Latter Day Saints or the National Archives in Budapest. There are of course one or two exceptions to this rule. However, during the 1950s, a law was enacted in Slovakia whereby the State was given the right to take all parish registers and put them into record offices.

In recent years a book summarising the extent of all the registers of Slovakia has been produced. As it costs the princely sum of £1.50 it is worth purchasing a copy, possibly by mail before you visit the country. The book is called "Cirkevné Matriky Na Slovensku Zo 16.-19. Storocia" (Parish Registers in Slovakia from the 16th to 19th Century) and is published by Obdor Archívnictva Mv Sr. The head office for the Slovakian Archives is located at Krizkova 7 in Bratislava. Like Hungary, Slovakia has separate City Archives for its capital Bratislava and they are located in the back of the City Museum in Primaciálne nám. There is talk of this archives being moved shortly so it would be best when you arrive in Bratislava to check in it at Krizkova 7 first and establish where the records are.

Bratislava: Capital City
Bratislava itself has two main Roman Catholic Churches. St Martin's Cathedral is enormous and the other, Bluemental is quite small and on the edge of town and was mostly frequented by the peasantry. Townspeople, the middle classes, burghers, successful businessmen and nobles were all married, baptised and buried at St Martin's. The Calvinist records for Bratislava are rather scarce as the Slovakians were more dedicated to Roman Catholicism than the Hungarians.

The Steeple of St Martin's Cathedral from Castle Hill

One point worth mentioning is that there are young English speakers in both the National Archives Centre in Bratislava and the City Archives, although their command of the language is not fluent, and one will need to speak slowly and clearly to avoid misunderstandings. One misunderstanding that occurred to me was a linguistic mistake, which caused me to drive 60 kilometres out of my way to visit an archive, only to be told that the records I was looking for were in Bratislava. When in doubt, write the name down and show it to the assistant.

Apart from Bratislava, there are several other archives. Below, I append a list of their addresses, but if one intends to visit them, do be sure of the location of the actual working area which is not always in the same office, or even the same town, as the regional archive administration.

District Archives
Stány oblastny archív v Banskej Bystrici, Sládkovicova ul. c. 1, 974 05 Banská Bystrica;
Stány oblastny archív v Bratislava, Primaciálne nám c. 2 814 71 Bratislava;
Stány oblastny archív v Bytci, Kastiel, 014 35 Bytca;
Stány oblastny archív v Kosiciach, ul. J. Bacika c. 1,041 56 Kosice;
Stány oblastny archív v Levoci, Mierové nám c. 7,054 21 Levoca;
Stány oblastny archív v Nitre, Novozámocká ul. c. 388, 949 08 Nitra - Ivánka;
Stány oblastny archív v Presove, Hlavná ul. c. 137, 080 01 Presov.

To give you an example, the archive service at Nitra has a work room where the registers are actually kept, and can be consulted, in Sala which is closer to Bratislava than it is to Nitra and one would therefore be better advised to seek accommodation in in the capital.

Slovakian Family History Society
Slovakia has a family history society, which has recently joined the Federation of Family History Societies. They produce their own Journal, but it is written in Slovakian, with the briefest of English resumées in the back. You can join by writing to: Slovak GHS at Matrica Slovenska, Novomeskeho 32, 036 52 Martin, Slovakia.

They can assist with research enquiries, but the Archives themselves have a research service which you can use if you are willing to receive correspondence in Slovakian. There are disadvantages with this however, as they tend to just report on the names and dates of the people you are looking for and will leave out vital details; unless you ask them to send a full report. One reply I had from Nitra, after enquiring about a baptism, failed to give me the name of the godparents of the child and the fact that his father was a "Nemes", both vital to my research.

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