Family History Tutorial for Historic Hungary

Purpose
This tutorial is aimed at Americans searching for information about their ancestors in historic Hungary. During the three decades beginning in the mid-1880's, there was a massive emigration from Hungary to the United States. In that pre-World War I era, Hungary was a large, multi-ethnic nation which covered much of what we now call central Europe. Therefore, most Americans with Hungarian (Magyar), Slovak, and Croatian forebears ... plus many with Romanian, German, Serb, Rusyn, and Slovenian Vend ancestry are descendants of these immigrants, all of whom entered the US traveling with a passport issued by the Kingdom of Hungary. Usually people seeking information about their ancestors have a pretty good idea of their family's history here in the U.S. So, they're looking for their "roots in the old country." This means they usually work backward from the time of their ancestors' immigration. The tutorial is intended primarily to support those efforts.

Family History Tutorial
for Historic Hungary.

Historic (pre-WWI) Hungary

Organization
The four sections of the tutorial are:
1) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) -- which is a good place to get started;
2) An annotated bibliography of useful Resources; both printed and on-line;
3) Background information on pre-WWI Hungary, primarily focusing on language issues;
4) Examples of nine types of Documents you will encounter when searching for your ancestors.

Access each of these four main sections by clicking on the appropriate "red dot" button as seen below. I strongly recommend you read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) first.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy and benefit from this tutorial.
Vic Berecz

IMPORTANT NOTE: Document examples are an important and unique feature of this tutorial. The examples employ Java Scripts for magnifying the document and displaying notes. These scripts DO NOT STORE COOKIES OR ANY OTHER INFORMATION ON YOUR COMPUTER. But, unless you designate this tutorial as a "Trusted Site", based on your Browser settings you may encounter an alert when you first attempt to display a document example. In the event you receive this alert, to use these features you must "Allow Blocked Content".

Status of this Tutorial: In 2013, I decided to stop work on this tutorial because the improvements being made to the Family History Library's www.familysearch.org website were far outpacing anything that I could accomplish as a single individual. What you see here is my work until that time. No further changes or improvements will be made. But, I believe two parts of this tutorial are quite unique and of lasting value ... the FAQ's and the Documents sections. For that reason, I continue to keep the tutorial posted.

2019 Note: In the years since I stopped working on this tutorial, the LDS Hungarian church microfilms have become available on-line at FamilySearch.org and both that and the Ellis Island immigration website have changed considerably. So, the portions of this tutorial dealing with these two websites are largely no longer applicable.

Your questions and comments about the tutorial are always welcome.

Send an e-mail to: Vic@Berecz.us