Unable to find birth record / origins of an aristocratic ancestor from (Rév)Komárom

Róbert Ráth

Dear moderators, I am reposting this because it was deleted for some reason without any communication to me. I am at a loss to know if I have broken any rules (I have read them and I see similar posts here) so please let me know exactly what rules I am breaking so I know where/how to post this question.

I have an ancestor who has lived in (Rév)Komárom in the middle of the 1800s, but I am unable to find his birth record, which would help me identify which noble family he belonged to. Here is his FamilySearch ID:

G47K-R4S

He comes from an aristocratic family with strong ties to the military and protestantism. His son Vincze Pál served in the emperor's guard in Vienna during the 1880s and Jókai Károly was his godfather (brother of the famous Jókai Mór).

Currently, his date of birth (ca. 1821) and names of his parents (Nemes/Nobilis Tóth István & Bályai Lidia) are based off of marriage records in Dad and (Rév)Komárom (both are attached to his marriage event). His death is unknown but likely died between 1894 and 1902 because he wasn't indicated as deceased (néhai) by his son's István's death but is shown as deceased (néhai) on his other son's Vincze Pál's second marriage. A death certificate would help because they often showed the place of birth as well as the parents there. But state death certificates from Komárom aren't available on FamilySearch for some reason so I cannot find them (or the death certificate of Somogyi Éva who died after 1902). His marriage with Somogyi Éva in 1841 indicates what I interpret the residence at the time rather than place of birth so he could have been born somewhere else other than Révkomárom?

I tried several things without success:

1.) Different search combinations (i.e. look for István whose father was István born between 1817 and 1825, or just simply any "Tóth István"/"Toot István" born between 1817 and 1825). Also tried looking for the last names "Bályai"/"Bátyai" to see where members of the Bályai family tended to live (i.e. Komárom, Rimaszombat, Naszály) and then manually flipping through slides of that same parish. Still, the only Bályai Lidia I've found in Komárom was born too early to have been a parent of a child born around 1821.

2.) I tried looking at protestant parishes near Komárom but they all seem to have indexed christenings, so not having found them with different searches means they're not there.

3.) I also tried looking at protestant parishes in Sopron/Vas, some of which aren't indexed i.e. Szilsárkány since I have other Ancestors from there as well.

So far, none of these strategies worked. I couldn't find any record of his birth nor his parents marriage or information about any siblings. I've come to the conclusion that either:

1.) They're hiding somewhere in a protestant parish that isn't indexed by FS that I simply haven't looked (highest chance). Are there any protestant parishes where the christenings aren't yet indexed?

2.) His parents were using a military parish that isn't indexed by FS (slightly lower chance but still possible). But they're all catholic parishes?

3.) They're hiding somwehere in an unindexed catholic parish (low chance but possible).

4.) He might have been born outside of the country due to ties with the military and/or church (lowest chance).

I've been struggling with this for weeks since I took up this hobby and I have a relative who has spent an even longer time looking for info on this same ancestor. We're quite out of ideas and any help is much appreciated.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Sometimes, it seems like the entire Csallóköz and environs claimed noble ancestry, so I suggest not concentrating much on that angle.

The reason you can't find civil registrations for Révkomárom is that it had no separate administrative identity until Trianon, so the records were all in Komárom — which is now Slovakia, and hence has no civil registrations online anywhere.

I don't see how the 1821 birthdate was arrived at, but it's all kind of moot: FS only has Komárom reformed baptisms starting in 1865. I don't know why, and I haven't waded my way through Fényes Elek's entry for the town to see if he says anything relevant.

Although Tóth is common enough that it theoretically ought to have been recognized by indexers, I wouldn't necessarily trust in that: capital T is one of the most often misread letters, and a lot of the Slovakia church books were indexed by people who clearly didn't speak a single word of anything besides English. Also, keep in mind that FS's matching algorithm is sometimes Extremely Stupid: it doesn't consider Tót to be a match to Tóth. Combined with the existence of many unindexed registers, the lack of matches in Search - Records indicates only that you have more work ahead, not that the baptism didn't happen.

Róbert Ráth

I've contacted the Slovak authorities about the death records, thanks for the tip.

The age of the couple Tóth István & Somogyi Éva is found in the marriage record in Komárom (not Dad), which gives us an approximation on István's time of birth (ca. 1821) and allows us to focus on records at a much narrower time range (between 1818 and 1823 or so) when going through church records. The names of all the parents are found in the marriage record in Dad. We are quite lucky to have two seperate sources to work from.

I've tried different variations of Tóth, including Tót, Tótt, Tótth, Toot, Toott, Tooth as well as Stephanus instead of István. I also tried searching without the last name (i.e. István son of István and Lidia). Still no success unfortunately. It could also be that some records aren't properly indexed. I've noticed this in Dad where a couple of lines were skipped, sometimes even half of a page.

Are there any protestant churches nearby that are known to be unindexed for that time period? Otherwise, we will have to go through each and every protestant church in the region.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I don't think anyone's even trying to keep track any more of what has or hasn't been indexed on FS, because it keeps changing: new index entries keep showing up, as if by magic.

The Catalog hasn't been updated in over three years now, so while the presence of the magnifying glass is informative (meaning that at least some of the images have index entries associated with them), its absence isn't: if you copy the film number and paste it into the "Image Group…" field in Search - Records, you may still get results.

(For example: Bokod's Lutheran registers have no "search" icon in the Catalog, but searching on one of the film numbers gives 28,000 results — of marriages and burials as well as baptisms.)

Róbert Ráth

Update on the current situation:

I have attainted the death certificate (attached here) from the Slovak authorities, which show Tóth István's place of birth as Komárom. Unfortunately, I was still unable to find him in the church records among the christenings (looked manually in the protestant christenings in 1818-23, starting here). Perhaps there is another protestant parish that has flown under the radar or not uploaded by FS?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Those are the Lutheran (evangélikus) records. He was Calvinist (református), not Lutheran. However, as I wrote above, FS doesn't have the needed timeframe of birth/baptisms from the Komárom Calvinist church.

(There are marriage records starting in 1829, and I'm pretty sure the church existed long before that; I haven't turned up any information on why the records are missing from FS, nor about who might have them.)

A note on the designation of his denomination: I know that the death record's "evangelikus református" is confusing, but it's just another name for "református" — one that originates as an erroneous (but ubiquitous) expansion of the abbreviation "ev. ref." (The correct expansion is "evangélium szerint reformált".)

Róbert Ráth

Thanks for explanation. I originally thought he was lutheran like my great-grandmother (ág. hit. evangélikus egyház) and I'm used to seeing protestants of all branches being indicated in the same church records. Later records from the same lutheran church (1840s-50s) show his marriage and some (likely not all) christenings of his children.

That leaves us with looking at the Komárom Calvinist records. What sources do you suggest that I start looking/asking? Is there a chance they were destroyed in the great fire of 1848? According to the history here, all churches except the lutheran one were destroyed but catholic records seem to have been preserved.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I have the vaguest glimmer of a memory of reading a history of Komárom with special attention to religion/churches, and I think it was that same work that detailed some of the events of 1848 in the city, but I don't remember enough about it to find it again, never mind what it actually said about those topics. (All I remember is my general conclusion that people can be awful to each other for the stupidest reasons.)

Neither MACSE's nor Wikipedia's lists of destroyed registers mention Komárom, so I'm at least vaguely hopeful that they still exist somewhere, but the MNL's database only lists the same things as FS's catalog.

Ah! Found something on Hungaricana:
Magyar Református Egyház Javainak Tára / Komáromi Református Egyházmegye 2. - Magyar Református Egyház Javainak Tára 30. Szlovákiai Református Keresztyén Egyház 13. (Debrecen, 2015) / Komárom / 37/256
Iratanyag és könyvek
Születési és keresztelési anyakönyvek: 1783-1821, 1822-1852, 1895-1910 (másolat), 1910-1939, 1822-1826, 1826-1832, 1832-1852.

I think this means that the registers are either at the church or in the diocese's possession — but at any rate, they definitely existed to be inventoried in 2015. Judging by the gaps in their dates, which exactly match the available years on the FS/MNL films, I think the register-books must have been split up, with some ending up wherever it was that FS did its filming, and some staying or ending up in Komárom.

Róbert Ráth

That's such good news! I was really apprehensive that they got destroyed in 1848. Thank you so much! I will continue my search and contact them!