Friday, April 09, 2010

Follow Friday - 09 Apr 2010

This Friday, I want to share a new and promising blog to the genealogical community. It was created by my friend Nuccia, and it's purpose and goal is to be focused on Italian research and resources. She already has some interesting blog posts and some neat books in the "Books" section. If you have Italian ancestry, you should check it out. It can be found here: http://gentedimareitaliangenealogy.info/

What's Been Going On Lately

I've been neglecting my blog really bad lately.. I want to say sorry to my faithful readers out there. You know who you are. :)

I've been busy and preoccupied with a few things going on lately. First is my cousin's Bat Mitzvah, which is tomorrow. There's been months of set up and preparation and I'll be happy when it's over. The other reason I've been busy is I've been doing a lot of research lately.

Last week today, I went to the Newberry Library in Chicago with my friend Cathy. That place is amazing! I didn't even get through half the list of books I wanted to look at, but I found so much information and great leads on my brick-wall Howell family. My Howell's are dead-ended with a Hiram Howell and wife Rachel. They were born in the 1780's-1790's and lived in Western TN and finally Tippah County, Mississippi in the last years of their lives. Hiram was actually murdered in 1853! Hiram and Rachel were married sometime before 1810 in Tennessee and I believe they had somewhere around ten children, eight boys and two girls. One of the girls was Temperance, my 4th-great-grandmother. She was married to George W. Vance about 1844 (place and date unknown) and they had seven children, before George suddenly died in 1859-1860. He was only about 33 when he died... another possible murder? Hopefully further research will yield those answers.

I've also been pretty busy researching my Hungarian nobility. Through my 9th-great-grandmother, Margit Berzeviczy who married István Horváth de Perlak, I descend from many large and old noble families of Hungary.. some with very powerful connections. Here are some of the families I descend from through Margit's ancestry. If you descend from any of these please contact me, we're cousins!

*Bánffy de Gara (garai Bánffy) - genus Drusma
*Bárczay de Bárcza (bárczai Bárczay)
*Berthóthy de Berthót (berthóti Berthóthy) - genus Aba
*Berzeviczy de Berzevicze (berzeviczei Berzeviczy)
*Bocskay de Bocskó (bocskói Bocskay) - genus Boksa
*Buchai de Bucha (buchai Buchai)
*Cseley de Csele (cselei Cseley) - genus Bogáth-Radván
*Csúzy de Csúz és Puszta-Szent-Mihály (csúzi és puszta-szent-mihályi Csúzy)
*Garay de Gara (garai Garay) - genus Drusma
*Gombos de Gombosfalva (gombosfalvai Gombos) - genus Tekele
*Haraszthy de Haraszt (haraszti Haraszthy)
*Istvánffy baranyavár és Kis-Asszonyfalva (kis-asszonyfalvai és baranyavári Istvánffy)
*Izdenczy de Izdencz és Komlós (izdenczi és komlósi Izdenczy)
*Kapy de Kapivár (kapivári Kapy)
*Lipcsey de Nagy-Lucse (nagy-lucsei Lipcsey)
*Macedóniai de Macedónia (macedóniai Macedóniai)
*Merse de Szinye (szinyei Merse)
*Nekcsey de Nekcse (nekcsei Nekcsey) - genus Aba
*Ostffy de Asszonyfalva (asszonyfalvai Ostffy) - genus Osl
*Soós de Sóvár (sóvári Soós) - genus Boksa
*Szilágyi de Horogszeg (horogszegi Szilágyi)
*Szini de Teresztény (teresztényi Szini)
*Zombory de Zombor (zombori Zombory)

I've also been working on something for my website Hungary Exchange that I hope a lot of people will find useful. It's guides on how to read and decipher church parish records. It explains how to read baptism, marriage and burial records and I'm doing three records of each of those events for each of the religions in Hungary. There's the Civil Registration, Evangelical, Greek Catholic, Jewish, Reformed and Roman Catholic. So there would be a total of nine (9) guides for each religion, totaling 54 pages of guides when I'm completely finished. At the moment I have 100% of Reformed complete, 2/3 of Greek Catholic complete and 2/3 of Jewish complete. I hope to have it up soon.

All you Hungarian genealogists, please visit my website and submit the surnames you're researching in Hungary. The Surname Database already has 125 Hungarian surnames posted, so check it out!