Roman Catholic records for Varallya Slovakia before 1900
I am searching for the Catholic Church records for a place called Varallya. At first I thought it was under the new name Spisske Podhradie. I was wrong. It is under Podhradie or Podhradik. I cannot find records for either place. I did have an online zoom meeting and was told to look at Nizna Sebasatova in the Presov district. There were no results for me. Can someone please tell me where to look for Varallya. Thank you .
Best Answers
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Well, first, we need to figure out which Váralja. The 1913 gazetteer lists two places named just Váralja ("foot of the fort, bottom of the fort") and a full three dozen named Something-Váralja. The two plain ones are a village in Tolna and a small village in Hunyad, which are nowhere near Slovakia. You mentioned Spisske Podhradie, so I think you must be talking about Szepesváralja, which was a town in Szepes county with a Roman Catholic and a Lutheran church locally.
It's in the Catalog with a hyphen: Szepes-Váralja (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/628414). When using that catalog page, there are two things to keep in mind: one, the camera icon takes you to the beginning of the film (image group). Before you click it, check the Film column: if it says "Item N" with N not equal to one, then you'll need to find the correct item number on the film to get to the right records. Two, the Catalog is now at least two years out of date, so don't necessarily believe what it says about indexing: the lack of a magnifying glass doesn't necessarily mean that a film doesn't have index entries associated with it. There have been a lot of new index entries published in the past two years.
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Ms. Szent-Gyorgyi,
Thank you for the reply. I have decided that the Szepes-varallya records for Spisske Podhradie align with my Szabo, Hanak, and Neisser family names. I do have a few additional questions:
- My ancestor Joannes Szabol & Mariana Jelenik had all their children baptized in the Catholic church with Godparents (witnesses) as "Domicella Maria Kesmarszky". (Their son Lucas Martin Szaboly and siblings) What is a "Domicella" (LDS record Film 10239365, Volume 763, 1803-1853, Roll 141, Item #2, image 302)
- Joannes Szabo married in 1814, his origin is listed as the present day Torysa Slovakia. Catholic records were destroyed by a terrible flood in 1813. I read about the flood, is there a way to document this in my family search tree? I like history to be incorporated in their lives, not just names and dates.
- My 3rd great grandfather Lucas Martin Szabol, known as Martin. He was a teacher/professor of Music and a cantor. His wife's family also was listed as "musician". What type of life would these people had in the 1800's and where can I get information on where they taught and if they wrote music or just played?
- Thank you and I hope this wasn't to lengthy. Jane Sabo Murray
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Film 1739896 = DGS 4948524, image 302 of 775
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9R7H-S27?i=301&cc=1554443
Anno [year] 1819
Nomen Baptizati [name of baptizee]: Lucas Martinus
Parentes eorumq. Religio [parents and their religion]: Joannes Szaboly, Mariana Jelenik, Cath.
Locus originis [place of origin]: Tartzal ex Sáros, Várallya [Tarczal from Sáros, Váralja]
Annus Dies mensis quo baptizatus [year day and month of baptism]: 18a Octobris
Patrini eorumq. Conditio [godparents and their condition/status/occupation]: Domicella Maria Kesmarszky cum Dno. Michaele Huszko [Lady Maria Kesmarszky with Lord Michael Huszko]
Minister: Jos. Sávelyi
The place of origin is clearly meant to be Tárcza, Sáros county, which as you say is now Torysa in Slovakia. (There was a Tarczal, like this register actually says, but it was in Zemplén county, not Sáros. It's now written as Tarcal, and it's in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county.)
Domicella is Latin for "unmarried/young noblewoman", i.e., sort of a cross between "Lady" and "Miss".
I have a family line affected by destroyed church registers (the Lutheran registers for Tállya in Zemplén county were lost in a fire in 1810), but the closest I've gotten to documenting it on the Tree is to mention it in the relevant reason boxes. I suppose if I found a good description of the event in a reasonably-accessible format and location (like maybe a magazine article or such like), I could create a source for it, and attach it to the profiles affected using my Source Box. I could also enter a custom event on the affected profiles, with the date and place of the event, and a short description of its implications; such an event would show on the profiles' Time Lines. Hmm. Something to think about; thank you!
I don't really know what a teacher-and-musician's life would've been like in the mid-1800s; my great-grandfather the cantor-teacher was a few generations later than that. (He was born in 1877 in a town that's now in Burgenland, Austria, but was assigned to a village about an hour south of Budapest, and that's where his son became the Lutheran minister.)
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Ms. Szent-Gyorgyi,
Thank you for your reply. When you referred to Place of Origin, would that be the place Martin was born or the place where Joanne was from? I am assuming that the baptismal place was the Catholic Church in Spisske Podhradie.
Martin's son Joseph Szabo was studying to be a Catholic Priest; but alas he changed his mind and married my great grandmother....the rest is history.
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The "place of origin" column in a baptismal register logically refers to the parents, as the child is assumed to be local. :-)
Yeah, um, Catholic priest versus Lutheran minister have rather different genealogical implications. (I've got more than one of the latter, besides the grandfather who was the cantor-teacher's son.)
Note that when a register is in Latin, as these are, all of the given names are translated into that language, and Latin has all sorts of grammar rules that change the endings of words (including names). That's why you'll see Joannes (or Johannes) when it's the baby, Joannis (or Johannis) when it's the father, and Joanne (or Johanne) when it's the godfather. (The baby's name is generally in the nominative case, the father's name is often in the genitive case, and the godparents often follow a preposition that takes the ablative case.) Of course, the person himself would not have answered to any of these. If he spoke Slovak, he was Ján; if he spoke Hungarian, he was János; if he spoke German, he was Johann.
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Again, thank you. The name information was interesting. My Great Grandfather Joseph spoke 6 languages, French, Hungarian, Slovak, English, Latin, and one other I'm not aware of.
Do you know where I would write to find information on the family in Spisske Podhradie and Spisska Nova Ves? I would like to know where Martin Szabo taught and was a cantor and what type of music the Szabo's and Hanak played or taught.
Last question, the Hanak's appeared in Spisske Podhradie in 1713, it is recorded as Jura Hanak; which I read is the Polish Czech spelling for the name, it does not list where his origin is from :( What would be your suggestion for researching where they came from?
Thank you, Jane Sabo Murray
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Given the location, the 6th language had to be German. :-)
Jura is I believe George in some flavor of Slavic? Ah, Behind the Name says it's short for Juraj, which is Slovak, Czech, and Croatian. But that of course just identifies what language the record was in; if it was in (say) Czech, it would've said "Jura(j)" equally for a Hungarian named György and a German called Georg. Figuring out the origins of the person may not be possible, if the records in Szepesváralja don't indicate it. (Sorry, I can't ever remember the Slovak names of places.)
I don't know who you could write to or where you could look for information about your ancestor's musical activities/employment. The baptismal records I looked at for his children just said docens for his occupation, which is Latin for "teacher", so perhaps you could start with what schools there were in the relevant towns at that time?
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