Are there records for Felso-Laps, Szepes, Hungary?
My grandmother's family came from this area which is now part of Poland. I found this town in the Slovakia Census of 1869, but not anywhere else on Family Search. A relative told me this town was bombed and I'm wondering if the records were destroyed. The town was also called Vysne Lapse, Slovakia.
Best Answer
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Dvorzsák's gazetteer says Felső-Laps had a Roman Catholic church locally, and it belonged to the Szepes diocese. The village is in the 1913 gazetteer as Felsőlápos, and is now Łapsze Wyżne, Poland. (Both felső and wyżne mean "upper". The laps- element apparently goes back to a Silesian [a western Slavic dialect] word meaning "burdock", but laps is meaningless in Hungarian, hence the change in 1906 to lápos "marshy, moorish".)
The FS Wiki page on Poland Church Records says Łapsze Wyżne is now at the southern edge of the Kraków Archdiocese, and gives a link to that archdiocese's page -- which is all in Polish. So is the local church's page. (I can figure out that the church is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, but that's about it.)
Note that the Kingdom of Hungary is the correct jurisdiction for all but the last century of the village's existence. (The northern border of the kingdom didn't change: it was always the mountain range.) Then there's two decades (1919-1939) in Poland, followed by six turbulent years (1939-1945) in independent Slovakia, and then Poland again ever since.
Given that jurisdictional history, I think you need to be asking in Polish genealogy groups. The country in charge of the records during the time when someone (like FS) could have been filming or digitizing them was always Poland.
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Hello!
You may have already tried this group, but the Hungary GenWeb Project might have some people who answer questions on their queries page that will know the area better. I sincerely hope the records weren't lost!
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Thank you for replying promptly. I went to that website and noticed that Slovakia is above Hungary so maybe I need to contact Slovakia. The Austria/Hungary borders changed a lot during that time. Is there someone at Family Search in Salt Lake that would know why there are no records for that area?
Thank you.
Diane
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The town is definitely still there and was not bombed. There were two fires in the village that destroyed some homes. The town is now in Poland and called Lapsze Wyzne. I have visited. Church records are good as far back as the early- to mid- 1700s. This is my family's ancestral town.
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