From October 1895 through December 1906, civil registration offices used a 2-page form to document all marriages. These records contain a wealth of information, but you first need to know where to look. Below is a digital image from Csörötnek, Vas, Hungary, We’re looking at the November 1895 marriage record for Imre Dömötör and Maria Magyar.
The original images are available here.1
When searching a digital microfilm reel for a particular couple and specific time frame, it helps to first identify the location of three important fields:
- Date
- Groom’s Name
- Bride’s Name
Ignore the left side of the image for now. It’s the 2nd page of the previous entry. Each new record begins on the right side of the ledger and continues onto the left side of the next image, as if you’re turning the pages of a book. If only an approximate marriage date is known, it may be necessary to scroll through dozens of these pages. The blue arrows show the location of the three fields we’re searching.
Below, I’ve taken the right side of the image from above and moved it to the left. Then, I pasted the 2nd page of the document (the next digital image on the reel) beside it.
Not only do we learn the bride and groom’s birthdays, but we also discover the names and birthplaces of each of their parents. Some records contain even more information.
In January 1907, the government introduced a new form. Below is a page from Salomvár, Zala.
Instead of using two pages to document each marriage, civil registry offices began recording three marriages per 2-page form. Below, I’ve taken the first record from the previous image and placed the left side below the right side, for easier viewing.
The notation MB 7/1962 suggests the longest-surviving spouse of this pair died in July 1962. Their signatures were amended with small crosses, indicating they would have both been deceased by 7/1962.
To translate the rest of the words in these documents, please refer to my page of Hungarian and Latin language resource links.
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