www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Where are the greek-catholic church records of Transylvania?

Hello Forum members, I am a new member writing from Virginia in the hope some of you can help me to find the greek-catholic marriage records of the Translvanian town of Targu-Mures aka Marosvasarhely or Neumarkt for the years 1846-1865. At that time Transylvania was part of the kingdom of Hungary but after 1919 it was annexed by Romania. I am trying to find my ancestors but am discovering that it is extremely difficult to find these records as the church was dissolved by the communist state about 1947 and only recently restored. Their assets were mostly taken over by the greek-orthodox xhurch of Romania. Perhaps some of you have done genealogical research in Romania and can give me a hint. In Hungary I found copies of the catholic and reformist records of that period but they never took the greek-catholic records as their members were seldom ethnic Hungarians but mostly Romanians.

It should not be hard to find records for the Romanian Greek Catholics, as there were only a tiny part of the population recorded as being Romanian until after WWI. The Greek Catholic portion of the current population is still very small and that was after moving Romanians into the city to change the demographics of the place. Have you been in contact with Bishop John-Michael of the US Romanian Eparchy as he may be able to help in suggestng avenues of contact in Romania as to where records are still kept.

My wife the genealogist says that you should first check with an on-line site called Family Search. Then you should search for other Transylvanian or Romanian Greek Catholic genealogy web sites. Ultimately, you may have to write or go to Romania. The problem is so many parishes were obliterated after World War II, it is difficult to know what records survived. I don't know what the practice was in Transylvania under the Austro-Hungarian rule, but it may have been necessary to register marriages with the civil authorities, too, in which case town records are the place to look.

Many thanks to the received suggestions. I can state that Family Search does not have copies of these records and that at that time only churches performed as record-keepers of vital statistics. Over the years I had contacted several possible Romanian sources but none replied, probably not knowing Romanian renders the attempts futile. One interesting suggestion is to contact the US-Romanian bishop, at least there shouldn't be the language barrier. Thank you again.

Bishop John Michael is a native-born American, speaks English as fluently as any of us, and is a member of the Romanian Greek Catholic synod. Whether he can help you or not is problematic, since, as I said, so many parish records were destroyed, particularly during the Communist era. Still, he's a very open and warm man, and if you approach him, he'll help you to whatever extent he is able.

We do have a couple of members from Romania, perhaps one of them will see this and chime in with further suggestions.

Many years,

Neil