Need help with place of birth in Hungary/Austro-Hungarian Empire on my GGF's USA naturalization docu
I am attaching 4 towns, the first is his birth place on 1922 documents. The second is his first daughter's birth place also on 1922 documents (which looks similar to his). The third is his birth place on 1928 documents. The typing is hard to read. He says his race is "French German" and he married a girl from Bogarosch, Torontal, Austria-Hungary around 1900. I'm wondering if he was from a small village in the Banat region as well. The last town is from his WW2 draft registration card in 1942 (which I can locate). I have tried searching variations of the 3 names, would appreciate any help. And any hints on where to find records would be awesome. He came to the US around 1903. Thank you in advance.
Answers
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Hi,
Bogarosch hungarian name is Bogáros but now is part of Romania and the name is Bulgăruș. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torontál_County
About other places I have no clue.
Maybe they wrote in the documents in English.
That time live Germans this part of Torontal county.
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I think the first attached image is trying for Torontál, which was a county in southeastern Hungary; it's now about half in Serbia and half in Romania.
The fourth attached image may be going for Sárafalva, which was in Torontál county, and is now Saravale, Romania. Other versions of its name include Szaravolla, Szaravola, Serafolea, Szarafalva, so I suspect the other two images are also trying for this placename; they're similar enough that they were probably both based on the same document, which was itself based on a misreading/mistranscription of some other document.
(This happened frequently: the shipping clerk in Germany was handed a handwritten passport, and did his best to transcribe the names and places from it onto the manifest, but of course handwriting is only readable if you already know what it says, so he got things wrong more often than not. That mistake-laden handwritten manifest was then used as the basis of arrival documentation, which involved a clerk transcribing, often with a typewriter using multiple carbons, what he or she saw on the handwritten manifest. That carbon-copied arrival certificate was then transcribed onto naturalization paperwork by yet another clerk. None of the clerks involved had ever heard of most of the places they were transcribing, so they couldn't tell an n from a u or a z from an r, and the carbon copies made o and c and e all look alike. Asking the often-illiterate applicant for clarification generally didn't help, because then you were dealing with trying to phonetically transcribe unfamiliar sounds in a fundamentally non-phonetic writing system [namely, English].)
Fényes Elek (1851) has Szaravola as a Vlach village with an Eastern Orthodox church. By Dvorzsák's time (1877), it also had a Roman Catholic church, and by 1913, it had a second Orthodox church. The 1913 gazetteer reports Romanian as the predominant language, but also lists German, Serbian, and Hungarian.
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Can we see the immigration papers? Maybe the town of origin is listed more clearly there!
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Thank you all for your replies! Here are the links to his two passenger manifest records. I'm also interested in where I can find records for his town of origin.
Hamburg:
New York:
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You all right
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Are you sure those are the correct links? Nicolaus Sturm, his wife Eva, and their daughter Elise were from "S. Peter" according to the Hamburg list, and the New York list looks like maybe "Zl Sz Peter". There were dozens of places named for Saint Peter in Hungary, but I can't find one that starts with Z-anything (nor L-).
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Free and better-quality image of the Ellis Island list:
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Yes, that is the correct link to Nicolaus Sturm with his wife Eva and eldest daughter Elise. The contact person was Eva's brother-in-law, Anton Regeis. Interestingly, passengers #23, 24 & 25 appear to be traveling with Nicholas as they are from the same place and using Anton as their contact person. Hadn't noticed that before.
Here are the links to my grandmother Teresa's arrival with her mother Eva in 1905.
A family story was that Eva planned to "go home" for her deliveries as she did for my grandmother, but the babies came too fast after Teresa. I'm including the place of birth for Teresa on her naturalization papers. Any tips on locating her birth records would be appreciated as well. Thank you!
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I think it's Szerb-Szent-Péter, later called Nagyszentpéter, and now Sânpetru Mare, Romania. Szerb means Serbian, and another word for that is rác, which would account for "Ratzenpeter". In fact, I just found a map that labels the place Rácz Szt. Péter. (It's the Second Military Survey map on mapire.hu: https://mapire.eu/hu/map/secondsurvey-hungary/?bbox=2308292.8684533173,5783082.174508699,2337319.8299446134,5792636.803044346&map-list=1&layers=5)
Unfortunately, it's now in Romania, which means there's basically nothing available online, so I can't verify that it's the right place. The FamilySearch Catalog does list a family book (Familienbuch) for what I think is the right place (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/692597), but during these plagued times, I don't know if anyone can access that.
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Thank you Julia, this is very helpful! So we think my grandmother was born in Szerb-Szent-Péter or Rácz Szent Péter, later called Nagyszentpéter, and now Sânpetru Mare, Romania. Is it possible to write and get Romanian records?
And we think my great grandfather was born in Saravale, Romania with other versions of its name include Szaravolla, Szaravola, Serafolea, Szarafalva. Do you have any recommendations on where to find records for his birth?
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You can write to the Timis County branch of National Archives of Romania if you have a date and religion; they cannot do research but will locate specific records. You could also hire a researcher to go there for you (although now they are closed due to the pandemic). Email requests (in Romanian preferred) are being responded to, if slowly.
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