Church Slavonic Language in Hungarian Greek Catholic Records

If you have worked with Greek Catholic church records from northeastern Hungary, Slovakia, Carpathian Ruthenia or Romania, chances are you encountered this mysterious and seemingly illegible language: 

Kis Dobra Greek Catholic baptism records, 1850

As if deciphering old Latin handwriting was not difficult enough, right?!

This is Old Church Slavonic, created in the mid-9th century as the first Slavic literary language for translating the Bible and other ecclesiastical texts. It has never been a language of everyday communication. It has only been used by Orthodox and Greek Catholic priests in church ceremonies and documentation. This is an archaic language, incomprehensible for most native speakers of any modern Slavic language, who never took paleography classes.

Let alone the speakers of Latin script-based languages!

But it can make you feel better knowing that the Hungarian priests in the 19th century were, too, complaining about “not understanding the Slavic language”, which they were supposed to keep records in. The thing is that historically Greek Catholic church was mostly composed of Ruthenians and Romanians. In the 17-18th centuries, after the conflict with Protestants, many Hungarians joined the Greek Catholic church. In the 19th century Hungarian language started to be used, but after the defeat of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, there was a return to Church Slavonic again. This process was not uniform, and varied not only between Munkács and Eperjes dioceses, but even from church to church within the same episcopate.

It explains the sudden changes in script in the mid-19th century records, sometimes just in the middle of a page, as in the picture below. Notice how the upper two rows are in Church Slavonic and the bottom two lines are in Hungarian. It looks like it is even the same person's handwriting. 

Kis Dobra Greek Catholic baptism records, 1850

It looks like the priests were given new instructions every now and then. I would also guess that they acted based on those instructions, as well as their own preferences and competences. Who can blame them?


If you are struggling with Church Slavonic records, here are some resources that you can use:

• Old Church Slavonic Online Dictionary
• Old Church Slavonic Numbers, Dates, and Months by Matthew Bialawa 
• Introduction to Church Slavonic video tutorial
• MACSE (Hungarian Society of Family History Research) page with tips on reading the old Slavic script (in Hungarian)

Textbooks, for a deep dive into Church Slavonic language:

• Handbook of Old church Slavonic
• An Introduction to Old Church Slavic by William R. Schmalstieg
• Old Church Slavonic: An Elementary Grammar by S. C. Gardiner  
• А.И. Изотов. Старославянский и церковнославянский языки: Грамматика, упражнения, тексты. (In Russian)
• А.А. Плетнева, А.Г. Кравецкий. Учебное руководство по церковнославянскому языкую. - М.: Издательство Древо Добра, 2001. (in Russian)

If you already know some basics of reading Cyrillic letters, it is a good idea to use a table like this one, while reading records. As the script was evolving, the form of letters changed over time. 

Variations of handwritten Church Slavonic alphabet

If you still have troubles with Old Church Slavonic records, please, contact me and I will be happy to assist you.

Death (and Love) in the Time of Cholera in 19th Century Hungary

While I was conducting research for a client in the Greek Catholic church records from Kis Dobra in present day Slovakia (formerly the Hungarian Kingdom), I stumbled upon the documentation of a cholera outbreak in the village.

It started in the beginning of 1873, with just several cases of death from cholera. By summer, practically all death records listed “cholera” as the cause of death.

The disease seems to have affected all ages equally, from babies to middle-aged and older people. Oftentimes, they were relatives, which is to be expected with an infectious disease. Here, two men of 34 y.o. and a 26 y.o. and a 3 y.o. girl from the same family became victims of the cholera outbreak. How devastating it must have been for the family!

The mortality rate was very high, considering that in a small community of less than a thousand people 2-3 people were dying every day for about a year. This is the total population, accounting the members of the Kis Dobra Greek Catholic parish from several neighboring villages, and not the amount of infected people.

According to the Wikipedia page on seven recorded cholera pandemics worldwide, two were severe in Hungary: within the second (1829–1837) and the fourth (1863–1875) pandemics. In Hungary specifically, cholera first appeared in 1831, and is estimated to result in about 100,000 deaths. The next pandemic was in 1872-1874, taking away 30,000 lives. Some Hungarian sources provide significantly higher estimates.

If this were not enough, literally at the same time, there were multiple cases of deaths caused by typhus.

Meanwhile, life went on in Kis Dobra. Children were born and couples got married. There are records of a death and a marriage that took place in the same family, just two months apart. A 73 y.o. man from the village called Bély dies of cholera in August 1873. A young man from the same house, probably his son or a grandson, gets married in October the same year. This was rather unusual to have a wedding in a mourning family so little time apart. But who knows what the circumstances were? A shotgun wedding? Another drama?

Why is this relevant? Details like these add dimension to a genealogy research. Reading historical records carefully is what creates a story, beyond just basic birth-marriage-death facts. As genealogists we can benefit from digging into every little detail from a record to get details about the life of people we are researching.

What else? Although this was an absolutely accidental find, it came in the time when a pandemic is causing a major panic and anxiety around the world. To me this is a reminder that pandemics have always been part of human history. Our ancestors have been dealing with a multitude of devastating diseases, on top of already relatively short (by modern standards) lifespans. We are the lucky descendants of survivors. However sad the story is, this is a pacifying thought about human resilience.

 

1869 Hungarian Census at Transcarpathia Regional Archive, Ukraine

In 1869 an all-country population census was conducted in the Kingdom of Hungary. It included representatives of all religions and social status, making it a valuable source for family history. This census can be used to bridge a gap in the vital records, or to add depth to the known facts about your ancestors' life in the second half of 19th century.

Like most censuses, the 1869 census lists members of the household, their relationship to the head of the household, years and places of birth, as well as some details about their possessions. The questions with translations are provided on this FamilySerach Wiki page. 
 

Cover page of the questionnaire

For most of the present-day Hungary, however, only statistical data from the 1869 census has been preserved, with the exception of several towns (Győr, Hajduszoboszló, Nyiregyháza, Szentes). Personal data of this census is only available for those counties that are now completely or partly in Slovakia, and several towns in Hungary. They can be researched online on FamilySearch, as well as in a JewishGen database.

Here I would like to highlight a collection containing records of the 1869 census, available at the State Archive of Transcarpathia Oblast in Ukraine. More specifically, it is located at the local branch of this archive in Berehove (historically known as Beregszász).

The name of the archive in Ukrainian and Hungarian languages

According to the archival catalog of the Berehove branch, this census, listed as "Анкети та відомості перепису населення і худоби в селах жупи" (Census questionnaires and data on population and cattle in the villages of the county), covers the former Ung county.

Soviet-era cover page

These records are not available online, and can be accessed in person at the research room of the archive. One should sign up in advance and obtain permission from the director of the archive in Uzhhorod. If travel is not an option for you, you can use a local researcher.

Research room at the Berehove branch of Transcarpathia archive

Here are some examples of the census data from Korláthelmec, a.k.a. Putka Helmec, now Khomlets, Uzhhorod district (rayon) of Transcarpathia region (oblast).

So, from this documents we can infer the following.

The family lived in house nr. 166, with one room, one ante-room and one stable.

The household members:

1. Őri Pál, male, year of birth: 1814, Greek Catholic, married, day laborer*, place of birth: Hungary, P. Helmec, illiterate;
2. Homas Éva, female, year of birth: 1814, Greek Catholic, married, day laborer, place of birth: Hungary, Hosszumező, illiterate;
3. Őri Pál, male, year of birth: 1843, Greek Catholic, single, at military service, now on leave, place of birth: Hungary, P. Helmec, can read and write;
4. Őri Mária, female, year of birth: 1849, Greek Catholic, single, day laborer, place of birth: Hungary, P. Helmec, can read and write;
5. Őri Erzsébet, female, year of birth: 1853, Greek Catholic, married, day laborer, place of birth: Hungary, P. Helmec, illiterate;
6. Őri Jozsef, male, year of birth: 1854, Greek Catholic, married, day laborer, place of birth: Hungary, P. Helmec, can read and write.
*Day laborer means that they were landless and hired to work on somebody else's land, paid by day of work.

As you can see, quite a valuable information for a genealogy researcher. If you have ancestors from Transcarpathia, I highly recommend you benefit from this collection, if it has records from your particular town.

A New Database on Hungarian Refugees, 1918 - 1928

 

http://gallery.hungaricana.hu

A new online database, that can be used for Hungarian genealogy research, has become available and searchable both in Hungarian and in English. If you have ancestors or relatives, who lived in Hungary during and after First World War, it is worth checking out.

The database includes over 15,000 names of those, who fled to Hungary from its former territories in the aftermath of WWI, between 1918 and 1928. The data contains their names, as well as previous place of residence, occupation and the place of arrival in Hungary.

The sources for the database were the documentation of the Hungarian Railways, other archival documents, information from the local newspapers, in particular, Erdélyi Hírek (Transylvania News), reporting on the arrival of refugees in 1920-1921.

The project was completed jointly by the Trianon 100 research team, Noran Libro Publishing House and István Dékány, the author of "The Orphans of Trianon" book. It is dedicated to the upcoming 99th anniversary of the Trianon Treaty. Hungarian speakers can watch this video on the creation of the database. 

Were Frida Kahlo’s Ancestors From Hungary?

For decades it had been widely accepted that Frida’s paternal ancestors were Jews from Hungary, based on her own words. She wrote in her diary the following: “My paternal grandparents, who were Hungarians, were born in Arad, Hungary, and moved to Germany, when they were already married. It was here, in Baden Baden, that their children, including my father Guillermo Kahlo, were born.” Arad is a town in Romania, that used to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It came as a complete surprise, when in 2005 German researchers Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle published a book, in which they demonstrated that Frida’s father Guillermo Kahlo’s ancestors were Lutherans from Germany at least since the 18th century. 

My Grandparents My Parents and Me, 1936 by Frida Kahlo. Source: www.fridakahlo.org

A quick last name analysis of the surname Kahlo also suggests its German origin. This surname distribution map shows Kahlo as a valid, but relatively rare surname, with 83 representatives currently living in Germany. There is a similar last name, Kahl, which is much more common in modern Germany. The two could have the same root. Also, records from the FamilySearch database show people named Kahlo mostly being from Germany.

Although Franger and Huhle’s research seems to give a definitive answer, there are still many questions in this story. Naturally, in Hungary there is a vivid interest to this aspect of the painter’s biography. One of the focal points of Frida Kahlo exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, Hungary, held in July-November 2018, was her connection to Hungary. Even though the curator of the exhibition Adriana Lantos acknowledged the lack of evidence for Kahlo's Hungarian roots, the respective exhibit seems to leave the question open: “We can only trust that new, earlier unknown documents will become available in the future that will reveal the truth of the matter”.

Picture taken at the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Budapest, 2018

So, why did Frida maintain that her father was of Jewish Hungarian origin?


There are a couple of speculations. Some researchers think that she did not want to associate herself with Germany because of WWII, and for the same reason she may have liked the idea of being Jewish. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Frida did not mention her Jewish origin until 1936, when antisemitic legislation was adopted in Germany.

As to the Hungarian identity she claimed, many think it is connected with Nickolas Muray, a famous photographer of Hungarian Jewish origin, with whom she had a decade-long relationship. Muray's photography was published in Harper’s Bazar, Vogue and The New York Times. He also competed at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics in the fencing events.

Now, if with the Jewish and Hungarian identities there are some plausible speculations, it is harder to come up with an explanation of how Arad came into the picture. A publicist from Transylvania Péter Puskel mentions his futile efforts to investigate Frida’s possible connection to Arad.

My own quick online research on Muray’s ancestry did not reveal any apparent connection with Arad, either. He was born as Miklós Mandl in Szeged, Hungary, in 1892. Although Szeged is only 100 km (about 62 miles) away from Arad, it is not enough to assume a connection here. Miklós' birth record lists his father as Samu Mandl, a grocer from Albert Irsa and his mother as Klára Lóvit from Nagy Abony. Albertirsa was located in Pest county, while Nagy Abony, now called Veľké Blahovo, is in Slovakia. 

At Miklós' birth record there is a note, that he changed his surname to “Murai”. So, his emigration to the U.S. was already under this last name. As per Nick Muray’s naturalization files, he immigrated in 1913. I found a 1914 ship manifest of his brother Stefan Murai, whose contacts were father Samu in Budapest and brother Nicholas Muray in Brooklyn, NY. Stefan’s place of birth is rather difficult to read, but it looks like “Kispest, Delegyhaza”, which may be Délegyháza in Pest county. So, again, Arad is nowhere is sight…

Another Frida’s known Hungarian connection was Martin Munkácsi (born Márton Mermelstein), also an American photographer of Jewish Hungarian descent. He was the author of a number of famous photos of Frida and her husband Diego Riviera. Martin Munkácsi was born in born in Kolozsvár, then Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca in Romania. Even though both Cluj and Arad are part of Transylvania region, it is still not providing enough explanation of Frida’s “choice” of her paternal ancestral town.
 
And lastly, another touch to Frida’s Hungarian mystery: a copy of the letter she wrote in Hungarian to Nickolas Muray. It was on display at the exhibition.

Source

Translation:

Nick,

I love you like an angel. You are a lily-of-the-valley, my dear. 
I will never forget you, never, never. 
You are my whole life. I hope that you will not forget this, either. 
Frida.






The language of the letter is quite curious. On one hand, the text is in proper Hungarian. On the other hand, it has multiple spelling mistakes (like missing diacritics, compound words written separately, etc.). It feels like it was either written by a Hungarian native speaker, who did not learn how to write properly (as it happens, for example, with émigré children), or by a non-native who wrote down a phrase learned by ear. It is not known, whether Frida indeed wrote this letter on her own, or got help from a Hungarian acquaintance.
In any case, there are many sides to this puzzle.