Maiden name / First Marriage to Second Marriage conventions

Julie62354

Thank you for the welcome LaRue :)

I have run into a situation that is stumping me. I'm not sure if anyone else has encountered this situation and if there is a "standard" in Hungarian records of the era.

So I have Erzsébet Jéger Mészáros. On her husband's (Mészáros) death certificate (1966) her name is EJM. She had two children before her marriage to Mészáros, and their last names are Jéger. I have no idea if those children were illegitimate or not. I was told that she had two husbands.
So if husband #1 was Jéger and husband #2 was Mészaros… how do I find her maiden name?

Does anyone know if the convention was to keep husband #1's last name on documents until marriage to husband #2? This would have been around 1929. (I'm assuming this is the case, but if anyone else has experience with this, it would be so helpful.)

Things I can't find: (which would get me through this sticking point lol)
-birth records for any of her children 1923, 1925, 1930, 1931
-her marriage records (about 1929) or any of her children's marriage records (early 1950s)
-her death record (probably 1960s)

If anyone has insight into details like, certain years or areas of the country not being indexed, or something. I would love to learn more about the tidbits I may have missed.

Köszönöm nagyon szépen
Julie

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I went looking for an example of a widow getting re-married and finally found one by random poking.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GR2Q-96C6?lang=en&i=204
Groom: Sevesik Mátyás
Bride: özvegy Rumi Mártonné született Farkas Rozália
Bride's name on signature lines (on image 206 of 608): Sevesik Mátyásné Farkas Rozália.

And another one, from a different place in a different county.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9PXW-9KPP?lang=en&i=17&cc=1452460
Groom: Stern Mihály
Bride: özvegy Beck Sámuelné született Deutsch Netti
Bride's signature (next image): Stern Mihályné Deutsch Netti.

In both examples, the bride's name is entered "long-form" twice: widow Mrs. X Y born A B on the "bride" line, then Mrs. N M born A B in the signatures area. In other words, the previous husband's full name is used until re-marriage, at which point it is dropped entirely in favor of the new husband's full name. Either way, only the bride's maiden name contains her actual given name, and of course it remains unchanged.

I should note that what I've described is specific to Hungarian official usage. Unofficial usage varied by community. Heavily German- or Slovak-influenced places did sometimes call wives by their husband's surnames, English-style, so Hungarians were aware of the practice, but most of them considered it foreign and unnecessarily confusing. (They preferred their confusion in the form of anonymous wives. To this day, I don't know the actual name of Dad's uncle's wife; she made all the donations to the local historical society as Selmeczy Árpádné. Which was the same as her mother-in-law's married name, but I know the donations weren't Great-Grandma, because she was long deceased by then.)

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The double surname is an index error. (Not an indexing error, since it was an automated process that mangled the data, not the indexers.) If you look at the actual image, you'll see that her name is entered as Jéger Erzsébet.

In Hungary, taking one's husband's surname as one's own was not added to the list of possibilities until the 1970s. (1974, I think?) Before then, a woman's married name was always her husband's (full) name plus the -né "Mrs." suffix. Since this usage was so universal and so lacking in usefulness in identifying the woman rather than her husband, civil registrations used either just the woman's maiden name, or the "long form": Varga Péterné született Ravasz Eszter "Mrs. Peter Varga born Eszter Ravasz", or sometimes Ravasz Eszter férjezett Varga Péterné "Eszter Ravasz married name [literally "husbanded"] Mrs. Peter Varga". The word in between was often abbreviated, or in later records, left out entirely.

If you ask an archivist in Hungary, none of those 1920s-30s births are public record, and neither are 1950s marriages. A 1929 marriage and a 1960s death are public, but may not have been filmed, and/or may not have been made public yet, and are actually pretty unlikely to be indexed even if they are online. Following FS's usual 100-year rule, the 1923 birth may be public, but may not be online yet nevertheless, because it takes human intervention to change such permissions, and the database (and backlog) is huge. The 1950s marriages are not public by FS's rules, either.

Mészáros István and Jéger Erzsébet were married on 21 Sep 1929 in Mosonmagyaróvár. Her father is Jéger István, and there is no indication of a previous marriage.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Correction: they were married in Magyaróvár; it wasn't combined with Moson until 1939.

Julie62354

First, I'm crying.
I was only expecting an answer like #3 - which now that I see it, that makes so much more sense. Thank you for including an example.

I know I have clicked into that István Mészáros record, and I just didn't process, what was staring me in the face. I feel really stupid. 🤦‍♀️ It was so cemented that I was supposed to be looking for something other than Jéger.
(and now I know I didn't fall far down the tree LOL) jokes.

Thank you for the additional info about the years for Hungarian records. I have collected such a variety of years across my tree of varied nationalities - I just wasn't sure.

I am so excited and SO so thankful that you found these pieces for me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!