Child out of wedlock
Hi,
Research into my Hungarian grandfather has led to the indisputable conclusion that my grandmother was born out of wedlock.
My grandfather married in Budapest on 23 December 1894. He and his wife were Jewish and married in the Dohany synagogue.
His daughter, my grandmother, stated she was born in Vienna, Austria, on 14 August 1898 to another woman, not his wife. I did some initial research and can't find a birth certificate there, but admittedly, I am a novice in Austrian genealogical research and do not speak Austrian, German, or Hungarian.
My grandfather and his wife divorced on 11 September 1900 in Budapest.
I can find no other record for the mother of his daughter, my great grandmother. My grandfather immigrated to America in 1904, stating that he was a single man on the passenger manifest. His daughter joined him there between 1905-1907 without her mother. I do not know if her mother, my great grandmother, even survived the birth. Therefore, obtaining the divorce file might offer some clues, especially if the reason for filing was adultery.
In American censuses, the father and later the daughter gave various locations for the birthplace of her mother. In 1910, U. S. Census stated the mother was born in "Hun. German," which I take to mean in Hungary of German descent. In the 1920 U. S. census, after World War I, her birthplace was given as "Austria." In these two censuses, the daughter was still a minor, so the informant was likely either her father or stepmother, who never knew the mother. However, in 1930, after the daughter is an adult and married, she states that her mother was born in "Czech-Slovakia," which makes sense due to historical border changes.
My questions are:
- How would people travel from Budapest to Vienna in 1898?
- What would people in this situation face socially and culturally?
- Would going to Vienna help to hide the birth? Why Vienna?
- I have the reference number for the divorce. Does the actual divorce file still exist, and where and how to obtain it?
- Would they have had to obtain a Jewish divorce, known as "Get"? If so, would those records exist, and where could I find them?
- I am trying to find out where my grandmother lived between her birth in 1898 and when she left for America around 1905. I know this is a shot in the dark, and no Hungarian censuses counted during that period. Does anyone have a suggestion or can point me in a direction to look? For instance, are there any child custody or guardian records?
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this query.
Arlene
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Hello Arlene-
I have some tangential information about illegitimacy and Vienna that may be of interest. I wanted to mention that Vienna had a very large birthing hospital and orphanage (Foundling House/Findelhaus) for illegitimate children who were fostered out to the Austro-Hungarian Empire provinces with a stipend. It's perhaps possible, that if the wife was barren, the daughter was an adopted or fostered child. The Jewish background does make that less likely as Austria was primarily Roman Catholic and Judaism would have been stigmatized. For part of its history, the organizers of the Foundling House simply converted Jewish orphans/foundlings. A person I've met who is researching the same town in Slovakia as I am has two female relatives who were illegitimate Roman Catholic foundlings fostered out by the Vienna orphanage to that small town in Slovakia with a nearly exclusively Lutheran population of foster parents. Given that the child joined the father, that does more strongly support the infidelity scenario with the father being a biological parent. Perhaps the original marriage was an arranged marriage and both spouses wished to be free of it from the beginning.
The birth records for the large Vienna orphanage are available for free from Genteam.at if you register. They are searchable by exact name and birthdate. They are also searchable at Ancestry.com as of a few months ago (paid service).
See this link below for more background on this Vienna tie to the history of illegitimate foster children.
"https://second.wiki/wiki/wiener_gebc3a4r-_und_findelhaus"
Also, I recommend Lara Diamond's Jewnealogy blog for great inspiration on how to research Jewish genealogy issues.
"https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/"
I also recommend that you try to find the name/origin point/contact details on the ship immigration record for the person who accompanied this very young child from Europe to her father in the US. It may have been a person from a hometown and/or a relative. I have a similar example in my family where 2 minor children were sent with a townsperson from their birth village in Ukraine to their single mother in Pennsylvania. This information appeared on the ship manifest. It correctly confirms the town in Pennsylvania that their mother moved to - a geographic area she never moved away from after immigrating. Maybe you will have luck there. The ship transcriptions have many errors so be thorough in your search. Some people only have luck if they look at every single record manually.
Budapest and Vienna were imperial capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I am not an expert in transport, but I'm sure they were sufficiently connected by rail. Rail is how people from Eastern Europe traveled to the seaports they used to immigrate to the US.
Romi
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1. As Romi says, by rail. Both Budapest and Vienna had multiple central hub railway stations in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and travel between the cities was easy and common.
2. I know that illegitimacy still carried a strong social stigma for the child -- nonsensical as that is, because what the heck is the child supposed to do about it? -- so families would do what they could to keep the situation private. I'm not certain that my aunts are aware that their grandmother was illegitimate, for example. However, it all boiled down to the specific personalities involved, because my grandfather's cousin, forced to carry his mother's absent husband's surname in childhood, changed his name to his mother's surname immediately upon attaining his majority.
3. Again as Romi says, "why Vienna" because huge (and therefore anonymous) birthing hospital.
4. I don't think there's any single answer to "does the file exist". I found the file for a relative's (unsuccessful) 1882 divorce proceedings on Hungaricana, and I believe there are also some records on Arcanum, but it's a matter of luck, really. (Search is free on Arcanum, but access to the documents themselves is generally subscription-based. Hungaricana is free.)
5. No idea on this one, sorry.
6. There was a census in 1900, but Hungarian censuses are not a genealogical resource -- they're statistical only, with the enumeration sheets being destroyed after tabulation. If she had been a few years older, you might've been able to find something in the school records on Hungaricana and/or Arcanum, but that's a very long shot for a seven-year-old girl. There are some orphan's court records on Hungaricana/Arcanum, but again, matter of luck. So again echoing Romi, look for her passenger manifest: circa 1905 it should have a departure contact as well as an arrival contact, and those may be able to tell you something about her living arrangements. Other than that, the best I can think of is to ask around the family about old letters or albums and such; maybe her existence and guardianship are mentioned somewhere.
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Dear Julia:
Thank you so much for answering my query. It was so nice of you, and I greatly appreciate your effort. You are right about illegitimacy, it is nonsensical to blame or shun the child. I have learned that my great-grandfather was not a stellar person. In fact, he ended up marrying at least seven times in Hungary and America. Through a simple newspaper search, I found out about the seven wives in a newspaper article, of which various versions went "viral" in the early 1930s and appeared in newspapers along the East Coast, Midwest, and elsewhere in the US.
I have identified six of the wives/partners so far and am still looking for the seventh, which he had before 1931. One of my aunts said he had nine, so I will keep looking between 1931 and 1948 when he died.
Your answers are extremely thoughtful and gave me some good leads to follow up on. In case you are interested, I have attached an article about him. Some family members or others might be embarrassed, but I love a "black sheep" as the rest of my family history is rather boring and ordinary.
Take care and thanks, Arlene
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