(Work in Progress. Latest updates)
TRANSCARPATHIAN TERRITORIAL STATE ARCHIVES 1921 CENSUS
OVERVIEW
One of the newly emerging countries after the First World War was the Czechoslovak Republic, proclaimed on October 28, 1918 in Prague. The territory of present-day Transcarpathia, also known as Podkarpatska Rus, came under the rule of this country.
The 1921 census in Czechoslovakia was adopted by the National Assembly of the country on April 8, 1920, Resolution 256/1920. s. ordered by law. The law provided that the census was to be conducted everywhere between November 1, 1920, and March 31, 1921, including in Transcarpathia, which is now part of Ukraine. The material of the census has survived almost entirely.
During the digitization of the approximately 270,000 pages of documents kept in the Beregszász branch of the Transcarpathian Regional State Archives, the summary sheets (settlement, street name and number, with the name of the owner) and census forms indicating the data of the inhabitants of the given dwelling (name, date of birth, place, mother tongue, religion, occupation, etc.) based on the houses (flats) of the settlements. The latter can be an extremely rich source of both historiography and genealogy.
The pre-printed bilingual questionnaires - Czech and Hungarian - were filled in a smaller part with a pen and a larger part with a pencil.
The conservation and digitization of the documents was carried out by the Archives of the Capital of Budapest in 2017 with the support of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
City of Budapest, Hungary Archives
What you’ll be looking at:
What you are looking at is the 1921 census of Czechoslovakia.
Remember, the first Czechoslovakia existed from 1918 to 1939. During that time, the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia), Slovakia and what they called Podkarpaska (Ukraine, your lands).
The first several pages (if extant) are often (not always) a concise list of the heads of household, ordered by house number.
The last pages (if extant) contain cross references, summaries and totals.
I have yet to decode what all those red marks and other notes in other ink colors signify. I assume they were notations made back in the office after the forms were turned it. It may have been for statistical, tax or other higher-level purposes.
Don't ignore a page or an entry just because it has been crossed out. We have no knowledge why the mark was made. For all we know, that information is entirely valid.
There are one or more pages for each house. On the right-hand top of the second page of the form is the house number (cislo). Below that is the head of household. Not always completed.
1921 Census records for Podkarpastka / "Subcarpathian Rus" , which is now in present-day Ukraine, in the years when it was a Czechoslovakia or Hungary territory are becoming available online. The source is the Hungarian National Archives. You can find it online at:
https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/KarpataljaiNepszamlalas1921/
You need to know your Hungary county (Ung, Mamaros, Bereg, etc.) and district. The villages are all arranged by their Magyar name, so make sure you know that before you start.
Most of the Hungary census records are aggregated data, not specific names, as most of the details were destroyed long ago. Only the 1921 census has people's names. The other census are useful for many purposes as they break down data by age, work, gender, religion, ethnicity.
Knowing your history goes a long way in understanding why these documents are written as they were. World War One ended in 1918. At that point, our lands had become part of the new Czechoslovakia, with Prague as the capital, and Czech as the “official” (bureaucratic) language for documentation. In the census, you’ll see headers written in both Magyar (“Hungarian”) and Czech. Things were in transition. The old Hungary county and district names were used for this census.
This census is one of the “easy” ones to understand. You will find that once you decode the headers. The entries are primarily numbers, names and places.
Remember that our villages had different renderings of their village name based on what the ruling country was at the time. (Remember this when you are looking through ship manifests).
CENSUS HEADERS
- - Headers are in both Czech and Magyar
- - Typical Responses (in Czech)
1. HOUSE NUMBER
2. SURNAME
3. GIVEN NAME
4. RELATIONSHIP
majtel bytu House Owner
Manzelka wife
Babicka mother
Bratr brother
Sestra sister
5. GENDER
Muzske male
Zemske female
6. Status
Svobodna/ Svobodny single
Vydana issue (object)
Ovdovela widowed
7. DATE OF BIRTH
8. Place of birth (village, district, region)
9.
10.
11. NATIONALITY (ethnicity)
Rusinska ruthenian
Greko-katolik Greek Catholic
14. OCCUPATION
Zemicdelstvo Agriculture
15. STATUS
Pomaha help
Common words used:
Ano yes
Nie no
MAKE IT EASIER TO READ ONLINE
To make things easier, let Google translate the web page into the language of your choice. So, load up Google’s browser, “Chrome”. This browser has the intelligence to translate web pages automatically into the language of your choice. It gets about 80% of the translation correct, enough so you understand what you are looking at.
EXAMPLES
Here are links to a couple of specific village census
( Format: Current Town Name – Magyar Town name – Hungary district – Hungary County)
V. Bystra – Hatarszog – Nagy Berezna District – Ung County – Kingdom of Hungary
https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/view/KANepszaml_016_Nagyberezna_Hatarszog__207_Verhovina-Bisztra/?pg=0&layout=s
Lubyna – Kiesvolgy – Nagy Berezna District, Ung County – Kingdom of Hungary
https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/view/KANepszaml_016_Nagyberezna_Kiesvolgy__210_Lubnya/?pg=0&layout=s
Back when I was crazy possessed with genealogy and digging out all sorts of details of our villages and people, I created a web site. It was formed during an exciting period of time, when the Family History Center and Ellis Island Foundation began to put their records on line. Before this, it was all microfilm, microfiche or impossible trips to national archives.
It's mostly oriented towards those with villages in Slovakia, but it equally applies to all of Slovakia, and also applies to the former territories of Hungary (including Romania, Ukraine, etc.) I have not updated it in a number of years, but the strategy remains 100% solid and most of the links still work.
Here is the page from my site providing an overview of Hungary census records and the information they contain.
http://iabsi.com/gen/public/CensusMain.htm
Last Updated: 02 October 2020
Bill Tarkulich
