HUNGARIAN FAMILY HISTORY TUTORIAL
Church Death/Burial Registers

1817 Unstructured Lutheran Burial Register

This register is from the Lutheran Church in the town of Szentantalfa in Veszprém county. It is included as an example of an unstructured register, and it is also illustrative of additional information being included -- in this case four deaths from a single family are recorded in two consecutive entries.

Format: Unstructured Narrative Death Register.
Preview of 1817 Death Register.
Click to See Enlarged Document.

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Content of Register.


In entries 4 and 5 dated 13 and 21 April respectively, a lot more information can be gleaned than is initially obvious. The first entry simply says that the noblewoman Esther Ovádi lived 24 years, died in childbirth, and was buried. Esther was the first wife of my third-great-grandfather János Berecz, a Lutheran teacher in Zánka, Zala megye. The baptismal records show she gave birth to twins -- Adam and Eve (these were very common names in Hungary for twins of different sexes) -- on April 11. This entry made no mention of the identity of her husband, or the fate of the children.

The second entry reads "Lajos, the young son of the humanist [ie. one with a classical education] János Berecz who lived three years, was buried by the pastor; the young son Adam was wrapped up with his mother, however Eve was buried together with Lajos." So we see that the teacher's wife and three of his four living children all died within a week. Apparently there were no separate entries for the twins in the burial register, since there was no separate burial. It would seem that Adam died shortly after his birth, about the time of the mother's death. The twin girl, Eve, likely lived a few days ... and therefore was buried with the 3-year-old. How (or if) the death of the 3-year-old was related to the deaths of the mother or the twins is unknown.