1848 Hungarian Jewish Census

The original Census records the following columns:

• Entry number for individual or family (sometimes both)
• Family name and first name, or relationship and first name
• Age
• Country and place of birth
• If a foreigner, whether a residency permit was held
• If no permit, how long in the country and community
• Occupation
• Behavior (really reputation)
• Remarks (rarely used)

This is an all-Jewish census; the only exception may be records for non-Jewish household domestic help. It is the best single source on Hungarian Jewry for the 19th century. Note that available records for some counties do not appear to cover all parts of the jurisdiction.

Each recorder followed a locally created hand-drawn form, so numbering varies:

• If only a Household Number is assigned, use it to look up the record in the LDS microfilm.
• If both an Individual and a Household Number appear, the Individual Number is the recorder’s number and should be used for lookup.
• Where there is no number, a sequential number starting at 9901 is assigned per household in a given town — such numbers do not appear in the record.

Names were entered exactly as they appeared, including abbreviations (e.g. “Abr.” was not expanded to Abram/Abraham). All diacritical marks were ignored, as their only function is to guide pronunciation.

• Partially legible names: as many letters as could be read were entered, with a dash for each unreadable letter (the number of dashes may not exactly match the missing letters).
• A single question mark denotes a totally illegible name; a single dash denotes that no name was provided.
• Where a single name could be either surname or given name, two entries were made — one treating it as a surname, one as a given name — with a note in Comments.
• Two surnames (e.g. a maiden and married name) were entered separated by a slash “/”; the search engine accepts either.

Special treatment was applied to Hungarian suffixes that appear at the end of names but are not part of them:

• “-(ne)” — means “Mrs.” (e.g. “Szabone” = “Mrs. Szabo”). It appears mostly with widows and often gives both the maiden name and the husband’s name (e.g. “Klein Hani, Szabo Lajosne”). The maiden and given names go in the name columns, the husband’s name in the relationship column, with an explanation in Comments.
• Town suffixes — (be), (ba), (ben), (ban) = “in”; (on), (an) = “at”; (i) = “of / from”. The town name with the suffix in parentheses is entered in the town column, with an explanation in Comments.

We are transcribing, not correcting: what was written in the original is what appears, whether personal name, relationship, or town.