Slovakia Church Records

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Slovakia

Church Records

For information about records for non-Christian religions in Slovakia, go to the Religious Records page.

Church Registers [Cirkevné Matriky]

Church Records refer to the records of births/christenings, marriages, and deaths/burials recorded by clergy. These records are the prime source for information about the vital events in an individual's life. This information can be used to compile pedigrees and family groups. They identify children, spouses, parents, and often grandparents as well as dates and places of vital events. They establish individual identity and are excellent sources for linking generations and identifying relationships.

Coverage

• Catholic parishes in Europe were first required to record baptisms and marriages in 1563 by order of the Council of Trent. The requirement to record deaths was introduced in 1614. It took several years before the practice was established in all nations. The earliest register from Slovakia (Košice) starts in 1587. Few Catholic registers date from the early and mid 1600s, but most registers date from the early 1700s.

• Protestant churches usually did not begin to maintain parish registers until the late 1600s. In 1730, Catholic priests were ordered to record Protestants in their books. Nevertheless, typically Protestant books continued to be maintained. A new format for the records was introduced in 1771. In 1781 the Emperor Joseph II issued the Toleration Patent which recognized Protestantism and Judaism throughout the empire.

• After 1784 the Emperor Joseph II declared church registers to be official state records. (It was necessary for the state to keep track of male births for conscription purposes). Protestants were officially required to maintain parish registers under Catholic supervision. Imperial law also required that the parish registers record births, deaths and marriages separately for each village in the parish. In Slovakia, Protestants were authorized in 1787 to keep their registers independent of Catholic control.

• At the Peace of Linz in 1645, Hungary successfully forced the ruling Habsburgs to recognize four religions: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. The ethnic Ruthene (Ukrainian) population of Slovakia was Orthodox, using the Slavonic liturgy and ritual. This faith was not recognized by the Hapsburg government. To gain legal status and its accompanying freedoms and benefits, the Orthodox Ruthenians agreed in 1649 to recognize the jurisdiction of the pope. The resulting church, in union with the Roman-Catholic Church, was called Greek-Catholic.

Contents

Christening registers

• infant's name,
• name and surname of father and mother,
• christening date (most also give the birth date);

Marriage registers

• names of groom and bride,
• date of marriage,
• ages,
• residences,
• occupations,
• previous marital status,
• names of parents,
• sometimes the birthplace;
• names of witnesses.

Burial registers

• name of the deceased,
• date and place of death and burial,
• residence;
• sometimes cause of death, names of survivors, occasionally the date and place of birth.

Accessing the Records

In December of 1949, all church vital records were declared state property. In 1952 the state began centralizing all these records into state archives štátné archívy. In many cases records as late as the 1940s have been placed in state regional archives. Registers more recent than those in the state archives are still at local city or subdistrict registration offices matričné úrady.

Online Records

The Slovakia Church and Synagogue Records Aid will teach you how to navigate these records:

• 1592-1935 - Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935 at FamilySearch — index and images
• Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books (FamilySearch Historical Records)

Additional Online Records Listed in the FamlySearch Catalog

If the records for either the parish or the time period you need are not in the online collections, try to find them in digitized records of the FamilySearch Library. Many church records were microfilmed. Currently, these microfilms are being digitized, and plans are to complete that project by 2020. Some records will go directly to digitized form, skipping the microfilming step. Check back occasionally to see if your records have become available.
Records may be added to the Catalog that are not added to the Family Historical Records Collection. To find digitized records:

a. Use the Slovakian or Hungarian version of the name of the parish town for your ancestors' religion. See Finding the Name of the Town Where Your Ancestors Worshipped.

b. Go to the FamilySearch Catalog. Enter either the Slovakian or Hungarian name of the town in the "Place" search field. Select the full place name from the drop down list of choices.

c. A list of record groups will appear for the town. Click on the "Church Records" topic.

d. Click on the blue links to specific record titles. The titles will list different religions and available time coverage.

e. In the film notes on the left, choose the correct event and time period for your ancestor.

f. Some combination of these icons will appear at the far right of the listing: . The magnifying glass indicates that the records are indexed (but possibly only partially). Clicking on the magnifying glass will take you to the index. Clicking on the camera will take you to an online, digital, browseable copy of the records.

Writing to the Archives

In some cases, parish records were collected by archives after the major filming effort by FamilySearch. If records for your parish of interest are not in the FamilySearch collections, next contact the archives.

• Using the Slovakian version of your town's name (see steps #2 and #3 in section #1 above), click on the Wikipedia page for that town from the Wikipedia list of municipalities and towns in Slovakia. Study the "Genealogical resources" section for a description on records available in the district archives.
• The Slovak Letter Writing Guide will help with wording requests in Slovakian, including a PDF form you can use for your request. Do not use the general archive address shown on the form. That is for use when you don't know which archives has the records. Use the address for the correct archive, which is found on the Wiki page for that Region.

Reading the Records

Except for modern records of the 1900s, records in Slovakia were written mostly in Latin and Hungarian. Many records were also written in German. Other languages sometimes used in Slovak records include Ukrainian (Ruthene dialect), Czech, Slovak, Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.

• Slovakia Genealogical Word List
• Hungarian Genealogical Word List
• Ukrainian Genealogical Word List
• Latin Genealogical Word List
• Czech Genealogical Word List
• German Genealogical Word List
• Polish Genealogical Word List

Church Records Headings in Slovak with English Translation

These records are two pages long. The first illustration is the left-hand side of the record. The second illustration is the right-hand side of the record.

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Church Records Headings in Hungarian with English Translation

Church Records Headings in Latin with English Translation

Latin Christening/Baptism Church Records

Latin Marriage Church Records

Latin Death/Burial Church Records

Other Helps for Latin Records

• These reading aids, prepared for Galicia, which was part of Austria and eventually Poland, will give you extensive help in reading Latin records. These forms were mandated by Austria, where the Catholic church was the state religion. They are typical of Catholic church records. The vocabulary will also be seen in earlier Catholic records that do no use a columnar form.
  • For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin birth record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Baptismal/Birth Record.
  • For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin marriage record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Marriage Record.
  • For detailed description and translation of a Galician Latin death record, see Genealogy of Halychyna/Eastern Galicia, Death Record.
• Latin for Genealogists

Reading Helps for Minority Languages

For more help with reading German, Polish, Ruthenian, and Old Church Slavonic, see Slovakia Reading Aids.