Translating records and questions (Hungarian Birth Records)
Hi I am in need of some help with information and translating records. I have a great great grandmother named Eszter magda who was born in Sep 1878. I have found one birth certificate of a child named Gyula Magda (My great grandfather) but there was no father listed on the birth certificate that I have seen. After finding that certificate I have found many other children with the same mothers name and age in the same small town without a father listed. I guess my question is, is that common to happen where the father isn't listed and is it common for someone in a small town to have the exact same name and age?
Here is my great grandfathers birth cirtificate that I know is correct (Left side)
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6V9K-9CPM
This is one that I am unsure of but looks very similar and could be another one of her children. (The one at the very top)
"Hungary Civil Registration, 1895-1980", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6V9V-2TQ4 : Wed Aug 23 23:10:55 UTC 2023), Entry for Magda Sándor József and Magda Eszter, 25 Jan 1907.
의견
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The 1913 gazetteer reports 25,835 residents (in 5439 houses) for Mezőtúr, so it wasn't exactly small; it was a _rendezett tanácsú város_ "city with settled council". (It's now simply a _város_ "city", with a steadily-decreasing population, currently around 15000, but a still-slowly-increasing number of houses, at 7800.)
Number 48. Dated in Mezőtúr, 23 January 1905.
Informant: Mrs. Sándor Poroszlai born Juliánna Gellér, midwife, Mezőtur, whom the below-written assistant registrar knows personally.
Legal father: --
Mother: Eszter Magda, Reformed, smallholder-woman, residence and birthplace Mezőtúr, age 26 years.
Birth: Mezőtúr, newtown, without number, 15 January 1905, 12:30 p.m.
Child: boy, Reformed, Gyúla István.
Remark: informant assisted with the birth.
Read forth, approved, and signed, except illiterate informant made her mark.
Margin: Addendum 92/1986.
Number 43. Dated in Mezőtur, 25 Jan. 1907, born 18 Jan. 1907, 5 a.m.
Child: Sándor József, boy, Reformed.
Parents: Eszter Magda, smallholder-woman, Mezőtur newtown 5th street without number, Reformed, age 28 years.
Pre-signature remark: informant is the midwife assisting with the birth.
Julianna Gellér, informant.
Addenda and corrections: Addendum 281/1982.
The social stigma on illegitimacy meant that people did their best to hide it, but it wasn't always possible: if the mother wasn't married, then the registrar wasn't allowed to write in the father without extra hoops to jump through -- and if the father was married (to someone else, obviously), then he couldn't jump through those hoops without admitting a crime (adultery). I'm not sure which stigma was worse, illegitimacy or divorce, and besides, if the man was Catholic, then it was basically impossible for him to get a divorce. (Ditto if he had children with his wife, regardless of the religion: my spouse's relatives include a couple who got all the way to the end of divorce proceedings in the 1880s, only to have the earlier decisions revoked and the [mutually-desired] divorce denied because they had a seven-year-old son.)
Speaking of religions: evangélikus református "Evangelical Reformed" is one of the labels for the Calvinist/Helvetic Confession flavor of Protestant. (The closest American equivalent is basically Presbyterian.) Its more common label is simply református "Reformed". It contrasts with ágostai hitvallású evangélikus "Augsburg Confession Evangelical: Lutheran", nowadays generally called simply evangélikus. (Which is why I think evangélikus református was invented just to confuse the later generations. It certainly did so to FamilySearch: the Slovakia Church Books have a separate waypoint for Evangelical Reformed.)
(Yes, in most of Hungary, you had a choice of a grand total of two Protestant denominations, Lutheran and Calvinist. In Transylvania, you could also be Unitarian. There were two Catholic denominations [Roman and Greek] and one Eastern Orthodox [in I think three flavors: Greek, Serbian, and Romanian]. And there was Jewish. Those were the choices. [Which is still more than you had in most of Austria.])
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Thank you so very much for your help! I really wish if there was a way to know if these to mothers were the same person.
sincerely,
Alisha Magda
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It's highly likely that they're the same person: the name, age, occupation, and religion match, the part of town is the same, they're both in an unnumbered house, it's the same midwife.
Oh, and actually possibly the most telling clue is the use of two given names for each child. This is still not the norm in Hungary, and you can see in the records that it wasn't usual in early-1900s Mezőtúr, either. In fact, I just browsed through the first 300 births entered in 1907, and only 21 of them got more than one name. That's 7%.
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Wow thank you this has been super helpful and great information!
Would you say this one also looks like it could be her as well? I'm Struggling to read it with google translate haha.
"Hungary Civil Registration, 1895-1980", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6J3Z-M13Y : Wed Aug 23 23:56:09 UTC 2023), Entry for and Magda Eszter, 26 Feb 1902.
Thank you so much for all your help!
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Number 127. Dated in Mezőtúr, 26 February 1902.
Informant: Mrs. István Csala born Mária Domján, midwife, residence Mezőtúr, whom the below-written assistant registrar knows personally.
Legal father: --
Mother: Eszter Magda, Reformed, smallholder-woman, residence and birthplace Mezőtur, age 24 years.
Birth: Mezőtur, newtown, number 194; 26 February 1902, 7 a.m.
Child: boy, Reformed, not named.
Remark: Informant assisted with the birth. Stillborn, death event in the current year's death register under number 103.
The death entry is longform and thus unindexed, but it doesn't say anything new: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GGYY-93N8?i=201. (Link to new edit-everything viewer, which which you could technically add an index entry for it: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GGYY-93N8?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3A6V9V-1WBH&action=view)
The name and the part of town still match, and the age is close (and matches the Sep. 1878 birthdate better than the other two). I don't see any evidence of Magda being a particularly common family name in the area, so Occam's Razor votes for it being the same mother.
(My great-grandmother's first pre-marital child was a stillborn girl. My great-uncle and grandmother were legitimized by their parents' marriage at the ages of 4 1/2 and 1 1/2, respectively, not quite two months before the birth of their little brother. I have not been able to figure out what changed, that they married then, and not earlier.)
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