The Máramaros County Jewish Records Indexing Project

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

NOTE: This project's home page is located at MaramarosJewishRecords.com.
Please go to that website to see the most up-to-date news about the project and its books.

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 18th and 19th century Jewish community records from the former Hungarian county (megye) of Máramaros.

Máramaros County (in Yiddish: מאַרמעראָש, Marmerosh) is no longer in Hungary — After the First World War (via the 1920 Treaty of Trianon), the northern part of the county became part of newly formed nation of Czechoslovakia, and the southern part became part of Romania.  After WWII, the formerly Czechoslovak part of Máramaros became part of the Soviet Union.  Thus today, the former Máramaros County is split (by the Tisza River) between two countries — the southern half is in Maramureş judeţ (county) of northern Romania, and the northern half is in Zakarpattia oblast (Закарпатська область = Sub-Carpathian Province) of southwestern Ukraine.

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.  For this project, we've chosen to focus only on the Jewish community vital records, which were officially recorded from 1851 to 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.

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 pre-1896 vital record books from the Jewish community are known to exist in the Baia Mare archives.  As of early 2011, all of the books have now been digitally photographed and acquired by the project.

As of June 16, 2012:

• 49 books, containing an estimated 30,100 records, are currently in the process of being transcribed by project volunteers.
  This is about 57% of the total number of records available.
• 42 books, containing 12,217 records, have already been completely transcribed by volunteers.
  This is about 23% of the total number of records available.
• Based on completed record counts and on uncompleted record estimates, we think that the total number of records in this project when it is eventually completed will be approximately 52,000 records.  Assuming at least three to six names listed per record (parents, spouses, etc.), these 52,000 records may yield about 200,000 names.

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 June, 2012

For a full listing of what register books and towns are available for this project, please see the table on the project's home page at MaramarosJewishRecords.com, which is updated more frequently than this file.

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.
  Example of later death register books.

• 

  Sample Death Record #2:
  Various towns (here showing Moisei, Romania) - 1860s.
  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.  Many of them are still working on transcribing more register books right now, but here are the volunteers whose work is included in this first June 2012 release of 12,000+ records (in alphabetical order):

• Kamil Buchler
• Lara Diamond
• Brooke Schreier Ganz
• Lisa Hill
• Chaya Klein
• Miriam Korsinsky
• Ronnie Lebi
• Sandy Malek
• Joel Meisels
• Hershel Reisz
• Emoke Salzmann
• Eli Stark
• Karen Weinberg
• Erica Wiesel
• Stephen Zivin
• ... and the more than thirty volunteers who are still working on other register books at the moment!

Lastly, we thank the support team from JewishGen: Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias.

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.