Recommend source of religious and marriage customs

LegacyUser

Recommend source of religious and marriage customs

I am a beginner researcher. I have browsed (not indexed) Slovakia church records carefully for three very specific things: two marriage records and one death record. I am VERY sure of the date range and county. However, I am not sure I am looking at the correct town or the correct church records. What I would like is a source that explains customs, like these:

1. When a couple marries, does the bride move to the groom's family town?
2. Does the bride take the groom's religion, and so their children will be in the groom's church?
3. If a mother dies, will her death record be in her husband's church, or will she be returned to her home town of birth, and her record is in her original home town church?

These are just a few examples. Understanding the customs of Austro-Hungarian people in 1800s is important, because when it is necessary to browse records image by image, knowing what town or what religion to look in can make a difference of days or weeks of browsing!

Thank you for anyone who can recommend a place where I can learn about customs like this.

 

Tamas Ecseki

I recommend you to look for US immigration records first than Slovakia church records.

LegacyUser

Thank you very much for your reply, Tamas. However, I finally found one record, just minutes ago. My ancestor's first wife was documented in the church of HER original religion (Roman Catholic), but in the R.C. church of her husband's town rather than her town of birth, and her death record was documented using her birth (maiden) surname instead of her married name. I had looked in her home town, her married husband's town, under his religion (Evangelical), and under her religion (Roman Catholic). So, she did die in Slovakia (then Hungary), but I did not understand the local customs of where is the best chance to find such a record. It is these customs that I cannot find described anywhere that I think could make a search much more efficient. Thank you again.

LegacyUser

Oh, yes, and the two children that my ancestor's first wife had with him, were baptized in HIS religion's church (Evangelical) not in the Roman Catholic church. This further added to my confusion.

A van Helsdingen

I searched the FS Wiki for information, but couldn't find any answers to your questions about customs in Slovakia.

 

But in Western Europe:

1. Marriages are more often in the bride's hometown, then the couple moves to the groom's hometown
2. Most commonly, sons are baptised in the father's religion and daughter's in the mother's. But sometimes one parent will convert and the whole family follows one religion.
3. People are buried in their place of residence very shortly after death. It would take too long in most cases to transport the body and have the burial in her birth-town.

LegacyUser

Thank you very much for these notes. It also seems that (at least for this one record) a wife's death record is in her maiden name, not married name. I also find no mention of her husband on this record (maybe just my bad eyesight!), and so I suppose that the death record lists names of people attending the dead person and, at this one parish church at least, there is no attempt to log the deceased's spouse or married name. There must be 1000 different ways that these records were entered.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

A few possibilities:

 

The death record is for a different woman with the same name.

The Roman Catholic priest was being particularly ornery about the validity of the mixed marriage. (Is the death record RC or Lutheran?)

The record does actually name her husband, just not in a location or format that you recognize.

 

Of these, the first is vastly more likely than the others.