The Máramaros County Jewish Records Indexing Project

Data Extraction by volunteers of the JewishGen Hungarian SIG
Introduction by Brooke Schreier Ganz

Background

The Máramaros County Jewish Records Indexing Project is a volunteer-run genealogy and history project, working to create a free searchable online database of all known surviving Jewish vital records — birth, marriage and death records of the late 18th thru early 20th centuries — from the former Hungarian county (megye) of Máramaros.

Beginning in 1851, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary required each religious community to record vital records (i.e.: births, marriages, and deaths).  Thus most of the towns in Máramaros County recorded Jewish vital records begininng in the 1850s.  Civil Registration — meaning that everyone in a given town was registered in the same book, regardless of their religion — began in 1895.

This project initially focused only on the Jewish community vital records, which were officially recorded from 1851 to 1895.  These records have now been fully transcribed in this database.  In 2014, we began extracting Jewish records from the Civil Registers, which begin in October 1895.

The 113 surviving birth, marriage, and death register books for the Jewish communities of Máramaros County are currently stored at a regional branch of the Romanian National Archives (Arhivele Naţionale ale României), located in the city of Baia Mare, Romania.

With the help of a photographer in Romania, who traveled to the Baia Mare regional archives for us, we obtained digital photographs of every one of the 113 surviving Jewish community record books.  (Originally we believed that there were 115 books, but it turned out that one book was mislabeled, and one birth records book unfortunately appears to have gone missing from the archives sometime between 1972 and 2009).  These register books have not been microfilmed by the Mormons (LDS Church) yet, nor by the Romanian government.  Other than actually traveling to the archives in Baia Mare, or hiring a researcher to go there, the only way for genealogists and historians to research these records is through this project.  We have also obtained digital copies of 258 of the 487 Civil Register books (post 1895), and have begun transcribing these.  The transcriptions of first dozen of these books were added to this database in the most recent update (October 2014).

This project has been funded through generous donations from genealogists around the world, and is managed through the JewishGen Hungarian Special Interest Group (H-SIG).

Project Statistics and Updates

A total of 113 vital record books from the Jewish community (pre-1896), and 487 Civil Registers (post-1895) are known to exist in the Baia Mare archives.  As of 2014, all of the 113 Jewish community books, and 258 of the 487 Civil Register books have been digitally photographed and acquired by the project.

As of October 2014:

• Completed: 125 books, containing 54,425 records, have been completely transcribed by volunteers.
  This is all 113 of the Jewish register books (thru 1895), and 12 of Civil Register books (post 1895).

Release history:

• June 2012: Initial release of 12,215 records.
• October 2013: Second release: 3,939 new records, plus some fixes and minor changes to the previously submitted files.
• October 2014: Third release: 37,476 new records.

Information in the Original Data

Generally speaking, early records in this data set — that is, records from the 1850s-1860s — have only bare minimum information available, whereas the later records from the very end of the 19th century have far more information available.  For example, a typical birth records set from the 1880s or 1890s would usually have all of these types of information available, and perhaps more:

• Child's first name
• Child's date of birth
• Child's gender
• Father's surname
• Father's first name
• Father's hometown
• Father's occupation
• Mother's maiden name
• Mother's first name
• Mother's hometown
• Sandek/Godfather's name [who was quite often a relative, such as a grandfather or uncle]
• Sandek/Godfather's hometown
• Town of birth
• Town of registration of birth (usually the same as "Town of Birth", but not always).
• Notes found in the original record's margins, and remarks by the transcriber about the condition of the record
• Other surnames mentioned in this record
• Other towns mentioned in this record

Important note: In the death records for this database, married women who died were sometimes recorded with their married surname, and sometimes with their maiden surname.  Not every record makes clear whether they are listing her maiden name or married name.

The Database

Contents of the Online Database – as of October, 2014

All locations above listed in Romania are currently in Maramureş county (Maramureş judeţ); and all locations in Ukraine are currently in Zakarpats'ka oblast (Закарпатська область), unless otherwise specified.
For the pre-WWI Hungarian names of these places, search the JewishGen Communities Database.  For the JewishGen Communities Database's list of all the Jewish communities in former Máramaros megye click here.

What do the records look like?

Here are some sample images.  You can click each image to see a larger version.

• 

  Sample Birth Record #1:
  Săcel, Romania - 1880s.
  Most of the birth register books look much like this one, with about seven records per page.

• 

  Sample Birth Record #2:
  Săcel, Romania - 1880s.
  A closer view of the previous image.

• 

  Sample Birth Record #3:
  Various towns - 1850s.
  Earlier birth register books look like this, with more records on the page, and often missing the mother's maiden name.

• 

  Sample Birth Record #4:
  Various towns - 1850s.
  A closer view of the previous image.

• 

  Sample Birth Record #5:
  Baia Mare, Romania - late 1800s to early 1900s.
  Baia Mare's records are unusual in that they have lots of Hebrew in them!

• 

  Sample Marriage Record #1:
  Various towns - 1850s.
  Early marriage register books look like this, and later ones have just a few marriages registered (since many people didn't register their nuptials with the state).

• 

  Sample Death Record #1:
  Săcel, Romania - 1880s.
  An example of later death register books.

• 

  Sample Death Record #2:
  Various towns (here showing Moisei, Romania) - 1860s.
  An example of earlier death register books.

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the hard work and volunteered time of many different individuals.  Brooke Schreier Ganz initiated the project in 2010, and was greatly helped by the support of Vivian Kahn, head of H-SIG (the JewishGen Hungarian Special Interest Group) and Sandy Malek, co-administrator of the project.  (Coincidentally, both are descended from families from Máramaros County, Hungary).

We thank Romanian researcher and photographer extraordinaire Dan Jurca, who traveled to Baia Mare several times to digitally photograph all the books for us, and we thank exceedingly helpful Budapest-based researcher Beth Long for putting us in touch with Dan originally.

We also thank our terrific bunch of transcribers and volunteers.  Dena Whitman has been our most diligent and prolific volunteer, but many others have also contributed to this effort.  Many of them are still working on transcribing more register books right now, but here are the volunteers whose work is included in the first three data releases (in alphabetical order):

• Kamil Buchler
• Moshe Davis
• Lara Diamond
• Brooke Schreier Ganz
• Samuel Gill
• Leah Herz
• Lisa Hill
• Shlomo Katz
• Chaya Klein
• Miriam Korsinsky
• Ronnie Lebi
• Sandy Malek
• Joel Meisels
• Hershel Reisz
• Emoke Salzmann
• Eli Stark
• Tova Trebitsch
• Karen Weinberg
• Erica Wiesel
• Gil Wolf
• Stephen Zivin

Lastly, we thank the JewishGen Team: Warren Blatt, Michael Tobias and Avraham Groll.

Searching the Database

The Máramaros County Jewish Vital Records database can be searched via the JewishGen Hungary Database.

Data from the northern portion can also be searched via the JewishGen Ukraine Database, and data from the southern portion can also be searched via the JewishGen Romania Database.