family history

How Are These Two DNA Shared Matches Related to Each Other?

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My husband shares 20 cM across 2 segments with one of his DNA matches. I wanted to figure out their relationship because the surname Ungi from the match’s pedigree chart was familiar to me. I had seen it on family records originating in Gyoma, Hungary where my husband’s paternal grandparents were born.

I was also curious because this 20 cM-match was a shared match with someone else, a 143 cM-match that I found several years ago – without using DNA.

I started with the 20cM-match’s pedigree chart. There was a great-grandmother (Ungi Juliánna) who died 7 March 1950 in Hahót, Hungary and had been born 29 years earlier (about 1921) in Gyoma. Eventually, I was able to make this diagram showing the relationship between my husband’s two matches.

I didn’t make a separate chart, but my husband and his 143 cM match are 2nd cousins once removed.

Here are the supporting documents I used to make the chart. (You will need to be signed into a free FamilySearch account to see these records) Names on the chart are in bold:

Hahót, Zala civil registration death record line 12, Ungi Juliánna, died 7 March 1950, age 29, from drowning. Her husband was Domján István. Her parents were Ungi Zsigmond and Kéri Mária.

Gyoma Marriage Civil Registration, Page 102, Date 10 December 1898, Groom Ungi Zsigmond, born 16 August 1874, the son of the late Ungi Lajos and Kéri Juliánna. Bride Kéri Mária, born 25 March 1879, the daughter of Kéri István and Szalóki Zsuzsánna.

Christening dates of Kéri István and Szalóki Zsuzsánna’s children
30 Mar 1879 Mária
29 Sep 1881 Susánna (Zsuzsánna)
03 Jul 1885 István
18 Jan 1890 János (died 26 Feb 1890)
That’s all the documents I needed to show how they were related to each other, but how is my husband related? Here is a chart showing how he is related to the 20 cM match:
I found some other family records that may interest you:
Marriages and Children of Juhász Erszébet
23 October 1839 The Reformed Church marriage record states that Szűts György’s son Mihaly, age 37, a widower, weds Juhász Janos’s daughter Ersébet, age 21. He was born about 1802; she was born about 1818
02 Aug 1841 son Szűcs Mihály 

19 Oct 1852 son István Line 306, parent Rác Mihály’s widow, Juhász Erzsébet. Note in margin states that István got permission to change his surname from Juhász to Kéri, the surname of his stepfather Kéri Mihály
14 September 1853 marriage record to the widower Kéri Mihály states that she was the late R. Szűcs Mihály’s widow. It should be noted that Kéri Mihály’s wife of nearly 24 years died just a few weeks earlier on 10 August 1853 during childbirth. You can read more about Kéri Mihály in my posts, 550 Godparents and 543 Arithmetic and Genealogy.
23 Sep 1854 daughter Kéri Lidia

Some of the information above I found a few years ago, but finding new tidbits of information about a cousin or ancestor is so exciting. I hope you can discover the thrill yourself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DNA Evidence at Ellis Island

/ ivasallay / 5 Comments

About the middle of August, Ancestry.com contacted my husband informing him that he had a new DNA match who was his second or third cousin. I was very excited to look into it. This new match is my husband’s second-best match. The two of them share 204 centimorgans (cM) across 3 DNA segments. There were several shared matches between them, and based on them, I was confident that the DNA they shared was from his mother’s side of the family. The surname on the match was Kovacs (Equivalent to Smith in English), and I was hopeful that there would be a connection to one of the known or probable siblings of my husband’s grandfather, Frank Kovach.

I immediately looked at the match’s pedigree. The names of the living were not given, but it appears that the match was the grandchild of a Mr. Kovacs and Betty Baker who were married on 26 February 1960 in Trumbull, Ohio. Mr. Kovacs was the son of William Ray Kovacs Sr and Barbara Bernice Jennings who were married 13 April 1937 in Pomeroy, Washington.  That marriage record indicated that William Sr’s parents were Samuel Kovacs and Elizabeth Jenney. I didn’t find any other records for Samuel, but I did find several for Sandor Kovacs and Elizabeth Jeney. Perhaps, the clerk had mistakenly written Samuel instead of Sandor on that marriage record. The 1940 Census shows a William R Kovacs, his wife, Barbara, and their two children living in Trumbull County, Ohio. That’s where Sandor eventually settled.

Samuel or Sandor.  I was hoping to see John, Stephen, or Julia. I was feeling a little disappointed that I wasn’t seeing the connection I had hoped for. I looked at this DNA match’s ethnicity tab on Ancestry.com. My husband is 98% Eastern Europe and 2% Baltic States. This match was only 4% Eastern Europe, 0% Baltic States, and 96% other places. Doubt crept in. How could these two possibly be 2nd or 3rd cousins? That just seemed too close with so little shared ethnicity.

After I got over my initial disappointment, I looked at my husband’s grandfather’s 1938 petition for naturalization. It stated that he, Frank Kovach, was born in Szürthe, Czechoslovakia (previously Hungary, but currently part of Ukraine) and that he immigrated to the United States on 16 June 1902. I was able to find this page of the 16 June 1902 New York arrival manifest for the ship Vaderland when he arrived at Ellis Island.  I had not seen this manifest before, and it gave me some wonderful information:

  • Ferencz Kovach is the fourth name from the bottom of the manifest. (Ferencz is the Hungarian equivalent of Frank.)
  • The ship, Vaderland, set sail from Antwerp, Belgium on 7 June 1902. It was nine days later when Ferencz got to Ellis Island. (The ship probably arrived at New York sooner than nine days, but each ship had to wait its turn in the harbor for its passengers to be processed.)
  • When he arrived at Ellis Island, Ferencz was a 19-year-old single male in good health, yet he had only one dollar in his pocket. He told officials that his occupation was a laborer. He came here to work!
  • There were a few other Hungarians listed on this same page of the manifest, but Ferencz was the only one from Szürte. Still, he had at least a few people he could speak to in Hungarian on the voyage.
  • It was his first trip to the United States. His brother, Alexander Kovacs, paid for his passage. Ferencz was going to McKeesport, Pennsylvania where his brother lived at 817 Jerome Street. Alexander is the English equivalent of the Hungarian given name Sándor! That meant that Sandor Kovacs was Ferencz’s big brother, AND he was the one who helped him get to America! It also means that the third great grandfather of my husband’s DNA match was indeed named Sandor and not Samuel.

Here is a descendant chart showing how my husband is connected to this DNA match. I would have expected the DNA match to have 12.5% Eastern European ethnicity, so 4% is remarkably low. Ancestry.com says there is only a 2% chance that two people sharing their amount of DNA would only be 2nd cousins, twice removed. We each get 50% of our DNA from both parents, but the 50% we get isn’t necessarily evenly distributed from every previous generation!

Now I wanted to know all I could about this Alexander/Sandor Kovacs! I found out that Sandor and his wife welcomed a new baby boy into their family just a few months earlier. They named him Chas, and he was born on 23 November 1901. Sandor was a miner at the time, a very dangerous occupation. Note that Chas’s birth was not registered until 6 January 1902.  That may be why his birth year was mistakenly listed as 1902 on his birth certificate. His birth certificate lists his father’s birthplace as Szürte and his mother’s birthplace as Gönc. I was so happy to see those birthplaces!

When Ferencz arrived at Ellis Island, he must have been very excited to see his brother, his wife, Elizabeth, and their 6 1/2-month-old baby boy.

I constructed a table of the household of Sandor Kovacs from 1910, 1930, and the 1940 Censuses.  The dates of birth were found in other records that are included at the bottom of this post.

The April 1910 Census had Alexander Kovacs employed as a helper in the steelworks industry and living at 917 Chestnut Street in Duquesne, Allegheny, Pennsylvania. The census indicated that he immigrated to the United States in 1895 and was now a naturalized citizen. It also includes his brother-in-law, John Jeney, who was an engineer in the Steelworks industry.

That census record led me to the manifest showing Sándor Kovács at Hamburg on 21 August 1895 as he traveled to Amerca. His is the sixth surname from the bottom on the right side of the manifest. Szürte is in Ung county, the previous residence listed for him on the manifest.

The 1910 census record stated that AlexanderJr was born in Hungary in 1905. What was that all about? I found 1905 civil registration records from Gönc, Hungary for this family!

In the margin of the right side is the civil registration of their marriage, we learn that Kovács Sándor and Jenei Erzsébet were married in the Reformed Hungarian Church in Pittsburgh on 6 November 1900 and that Jenei Erzsébet had been born 11 July 1878 in Gönc.  I wondered if I could get a copy of the marriage record from the church in Pittsburgh. Then it occurred to me that it might be in the Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City.  It was! I went to the library the first day I could after work and found it! Click on it to see it better.

Indeed, in Pittsburgh on 6 November 1900, 28-year-old Kovács Sándor, the son of the late Kovács Péter and Péntek Mária wed 22-year-old Jeney Erzsébet, the daughter of Jeney János and Laczkó Mária. He was born in Szürte and she was born in Göncz. I did not know before I saw this record that Sandor and Ferencz’s father, Péter, had died before Ferencz left Szürte to go to America.

I would have preferred to have the entire page from the anyakönyv, but the projector at the library didn’t focus very well when I tried to get the entire page, and I could only get a blurred copy of the full page below.

Thus, DNA led me to Ellis Island where I found my husband’s wonderful great uncle. I am beyond thrilled! I can tell that he was a very kind man because he paid for his little brother’s passage to America and he allowed his grown children to live with him in 1940 as the country was getting over the Great Depression.

Here are the family records that I found for this family:

Károly Kovács (AKA Carl, Chas, Charles) born 23 November 1901 in West Virginia. The record indicates that both Sándor and Erzsébet were living in Gönc in 1905 when this civil registration occurred.

Sándor Kovács (AKA Alex, Alexander) born 3 January 1905 in Gönc, Hungary. 

1930 Census

1940 Census Page 1 includes his daughter Helen Haught and her husband Terrance Haught.

1940 Census Page 2 includes granddaughter Helen Haught and his daughter, Mary Kovacs Collins, who lived next door with her husband and three children. (See Grave Stone and Obituary for Mary Kovacs Collins born 18 Jun 1908 and died 18 Jul 1987).

8 Jan 1953 Death record of Sandor Kovacs from his Find A Grave Memorial.

Edna Kovacs Staub born 19 Feb 1911, married Wayne Staub 11 Jan 1930

Alex Kovacs married Mary Ann Rusky 20 Dec 1948 in Mt Clemens, Macomb, Michigan

19 Oct 1995 Warren, Trumbull, Ohio Death Record for James Kovacs who was born on 29 Nov 1909

4 Sept 2004 death index of Helen Kovacs Waldron who was born 24 Mar 1912, daughter of Kovacs and Jenei

21 Mar 2000 Death of William R. Kovacs Sr who was born 29 June 1914

1393 DNA Shared Matches

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Ancestry.com gave my husband a list of his 50 top matches of DNA from their database. For each match they found, I could click on a button that would reveal any matches that my husband shared with that match. Some of his matches didn’t share any other match with him. Sometimes a couple of their shared matches didn’t make his list of top 50 matches. I made a table of his shared matches. It was pretty big so I made a smaller table that only includes people in his top 50 who have at least one shared match with him AND a second or third cousin.

I purposely cut off people’s names for privacy reasons, but anyone who shares DNA with my husband and the others in the table should still be able to figure out who’s who.

Ancestry explains that a 2nd cousin could actually be a great aunt or a 1st cousin twice removed. The 2nd cousin would have 5 to 6 degrees of separation from my husband, a 3rd cousin would have 6 to 10 degrees of separation, and a 4th cousin would have 6 to 12 degrees of separation, but most likely 10.

DNA does NOT “share and share alike”. Every person gets half of his DNA from his mother and a half from his father, but the half given from each parent can vary from child to child. I noticed that some of my husband’s matches might be siblings with the same surname, but their shared matches were not always the same. Thus, it can definitely be worth it to have more than one family member take the DNA test.

I made this chart to see if it could help me determine who might be my husband’s maternal cousins versus his paternal cousins. I don’t think I completely succeeded. The same DNA might not be the DNA in shared matches. For example, ab, bc, and ac each share a letter of the alphabet with each other, but it is not the same letter of the alphabet. Since both sides of my husband’s family had many siblings and cousins and settled in the Cleveland, Ohio area 100 years ago or more, it seems possible that some of his relatives listed on the chart are actually related to BOTH his father and his mother, but more distantly than 4th cousin on either side.

A positive from making the chart is that I have verified that all the people with x’s in the lower right corner are closely related to each other. The chart says they are also all related to Benjam, but none of them have any idea how.

Like so much of genealogy research, one answer will produce more questions. It becomes such a fascinating puzzle!

Since this is my 1393rd post, I’ll write a little bit about that number:

  • 1393 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 1393 = 7 × 199
  • 1393 has no exponents greater than 1 in its prime factorization, so √1393 cannot be simplified.
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, and 1. Adding one to each exponent and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 = 4. Therefore 1393 has exactly 4 factors.
  • The factors of 1393 are outlined with their factor pair partners in the graphic below.

Since both of its factor pairs have odd numbers in it, I know that 1393 can be written as the difference of two squares in two ways:
697² – 696² = 1393
103² – 96² = 1393

 

DNA and Big Brother

/ ivasallay / 2 Comments

When my husband was a little baby, his dad filled out the genealogy section in his baby book in his beautiful, distinct handwriting:

Even though most of the pages are blank, my husband has always cherished that book, and it has been extremely helpful in finding many other of his ancestors.

From additional research, we have learned that my husband’s grandfather, Frank Kovach, was born Kovács Ferenc in Szürte, Ung County, Hungary. That little town has had several border changes and is now part of Ukraine, but still only about eight miles from the Hungarian border. You can see a map showing the location of Szürte in a post I wrote a couple of years ago. Ferenc (Frank) was born 13 June 1883 to Kovács Péter and Péntek Mária – that’s their names in Hungarian name order. The baby book gives their names in English name order. My husband remembers his grandfather, Frank, vividly. He died 10 June 1968 in Ontario, San Bernardino, California.

Many years ago when I tried to figure out Frank’s place of birth, I found three other people whose parents had the same names as his parents. Could they be Frank’s siblings? Could the two boys be his big brothers? (You will need to be logged into FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com to see most of the links I’ve included in this post.)

  1. Julia Kovach (Kovács Juliánna) was born 12 Apr 1882 in Hungary (both of her parents were born in Ung County, Hungary!). She died 15 Jun 1940 in Cleveland, Ohio. Maybe Frank was also born in Ung County, I excitedly thought! Several years later I found a death record for one of Frank’s sons that gave the specific town in Ung county where Frank was born. Still years after that I found Frank’s petition for naturalization also confirming it.
  2. Steven Kovach (Kovács István) was born about 1874 in Hungary. He married Julia Csengeri on 22 Sept 1901 in New York.

    He MAY have died seventeen years later on 11 Dec 1918 in Union, Washington, Pennsylvania, but buried in Cleveland, Ohio.  The father on that death certificate was Pete Kovacs and the mother was Mary Pantik. The certificate says he is married, but there was no place to write the wife’s name on it. The informant was Steve Kovach, which just happens to be Julia Kovach’s husband’s name, so her husband might have actually been the informant. Julia and Steve lived in Cleveland, and the deceased, Steve, was buried in Cleveland even though he died in Pennsylvania.
  3. John Kovacs (Kovács János) was born 23 Jan 1870 in Hungary. He died 29 Oct 1943 in Cleveland. To fully appreciate the information for John, we need to look at his and his wife’s death certificates side by side.

Notice that the address for both John and Veronica is 9012 Cumberland, so that helps to establish that they were husband and wife even though the spellings of their last names are not exactly the same. This is important since there were MANY men named John Kovach in Cleveland. The couple’s shared tombstone confirms the dates given above. On Veronica’s death certificate, her father is listed as John Daniels and the informant is Dale Kovats. Further research establishes that Dale is John and Veronica’s son, and the 1940 census shows Dale and his wife, Rose at the bottom of the page, and their daughter and some of Rose’s relatives on the top of the next page. Dale is the key to this puzzle because Dale has a descendant who is a 3rd to 4th cousin DNA match to my husband! That means that John Kovacs is indeed Frank’s big brother, and I am in tears as I am finally able to positively make that statement.

Ancestry.com explains “Our analysis of your DNA predicts that this person you match with is probably your third cousin. The exact relationship however could vary. It could be a second cousin once removed, or perhaps a fourth cousin. While there may be some statistical variation in our prediction, it’s likely to be a third cousin type of relationship—which are separated by eight degrees or eight people. However, the relationship could range from six to ten degrees of separation.” (bold print added)

My husband, Steven, and this DNA match are separated by seven degrees.

Was big brother John also born in Szürte? It seems likely, but he may have also been born about 3 miles away in Kholmetz where a 4th-6th cousin DNA shared match traces her ancestry. If only I could get into the Szürte Reformed Church records and Kholmetz records to look for a Kovács János (John Kovacs) born on 23 Jan 1870 as well as the records for the others and certainly a few more siblings as well!

 

862 Look What a Little Bit of Spit Can Tell You!

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All four of my husband’s grandparents were born in Hungary.

Recently my husband ordered a DNA kit from ancestry.com. When the kit arrived, he spit into the kit’s tube until his spit reached the indicated line and mailed it back to Ancestry. This week he received his results, and I was thrilled!

I made the map below based on Ancestry’s map of his genetic communities as well as other maps showing what Hungary looked like in the 1800’s. Near the center of the map, we see a rough outline of what Hungary looks like today. When his grandparents were born, Hungary was three times bigger than it is today so I’ve made an outline to show the size of the country that they knew and loved.

Places, where there is DNA similar to that of my husband, are shown in pink. The three red dots indicate the known locations of my husband’s grandparents’ births. The town names are in big bold red letters even though they were all little villages or small towns. Gyoma used to be in the center of Hungary. Now it is very close to the Romanian border. Zádorfalva is barely in the country while Szürte is barely outside. I didn’t indicate it on the map but my husband’s father was born in a little village southeast of Gyoma. It was part of Hungary when he was born but part of Romania now.

This map is not necessarily about where my husband’s grandparents were born, however. This map also shows where some of THEIR ancestors lived hundreds of years ago. Even though TWO of his grandparents were born in Gyoma, the map seems to indicate that their ancestors moved to Gyoma from someplace else. Also, if my husband’s brother took a DNA test, his map would look a little different because a child receives only half of each parent’s DNA, and the half received can vary from child to child.

My husband’s paternal grandfather, István Sallai, was born in Gyoma, as were his parents and grandparents for several generations. Our research goes back to the 1770’s where all of his ancestors were either born in Gyoma or else they moved to Gyoma from Túrkeve, a town 34.8 km to the north. Sallai means “from Salla”, but we are not certain where Salla might have been. Maps give many possibilities. Also, Frank Kery is one of my husband’s second cousins through this line, and he made the list of potential 2nd and 3rd cousins that the DNA test gave. That helps confirm our faith in the accuracy of the test.

István’s wife, Mária Finta, was also born in Gyoma, as were many generations of her family on her father’s side. Her 2nd great-grandfather, Mihály Finta moved to Gyoma from Túrkéve where MANY people with the surname Finta have lived over the years. On the other hand, Mária’s mother was of Slovak ancestry and was born in Szarvas which is 24.4 km to the west of Gyoma. The Lutheran Church in Szarvas kept wonderful records so I was able to find most of her ancestors back to the mid 1700’s. Sometime around or soon after 1720, her Slovak ancestors moved to Szarvas from whatever Slovak town in which they used to reside.

My husband’s maternal grandfather was born in Szürte, Ung county, Hungary which is now part of Ukraine. We do not have access to any records in the area so other than the names of his parents and possibly some siblings, we know very little about his family. This map and ancestry.com’s DNA database will likely match and introduce us to cousins my husband never knew he had.

Zádorfalva is located where most of the pink is concentrated on the map. My husband’s maternal grandmother, Erzsébet Lenkey was born in Zádorfalva. Both of her parents were born to noble families so we have the names of many of her ancestors back as far as the 1200’s for some lines who also lived there. Zádorfalva is still in Hungary near the Slovakian border. The other towns of her ancestry are close-by in what used to be Gömör county, Hungary. Now those towns are on one side or the other of the Hungary-Slovakian border. The Hungarian names for these towns include Alsószuha, Mihályfalva, Horka, and Kövecses. The noble families of these small towns tended to stay in town generation after generation, leaving only if they married into another noble family and relocated to that family’s town. It makes perfect sense to us that this part of the map has the greatest concentration of pink.

I am certain that if you took a DNA test, you would delight in the information given, too! You might also enjoy reading Ancestry.com’s research about DNA and western migration in North America.

Since this is my 862nd post, I’ll now write a little bit about the number 862:

I learned from OEIS.org that the sum of the factors of 862 is not only a perfect square but also a perfect fourth power:

1 + 2 + 431 + 862 = 1296 = 36² = 6⁴.

  • 862 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 862 = 2 × 431
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1 and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 = 4. Therefore 862 has exactly 4 factors.
  • Factors of 862: 1, 2, 431, 862
  • Factor pairs: 862 = 1 × 862 or 2 × 431
  • 862 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √862 ≈ 29.3598

543 Arithmetic and Genealogy

/ ivasallay / 4 Comments

Doing genealogy is like working on a puzzle. Sometimes the smallest detail can be so important when determining who a person is. Sometimes doing a little adding or subtracting can be very helpful, too.

543-Subtracting dates

 

Unfortunately in the 1800’s many people were illiterate, and their arithmetic skills were sometimes lacking even more than that of people today. The ages given at marriage are not always accurate perhaps because the people didn’t know their true age or possibly because they added or subtracted a few years to appear older or younger than they really were. Sometimes the ages given at death are a little more accurate.

In the town of Gyoma in Békés County, Hungary there were several men named Kéri Mihály (Michael Keri). One of them was a widower who married a widow named Juhász Erzsébet (Elizabeth Juhasz or Elizabeth Shephard) on 14 September 1853 in the Hungarian Reformed Church in town. Their marriage record stated that he was 48 years old when they married, and the bride was 34.

I wanted to know exactly who this particular Michael Keri was. I looked through the Reformed Church records to find out more about him. I decided to look for his death record hoping that it would list his wife’s name on the record to help identify him.

I already knew that one year and six days after their wedding, the couple’s only child was born, a daughter that they named Lidia. Since her christening record indicated that her father was still living when she was baptized, I looked at death records beginning the very next day. After searching through over 15 years of records, I found two death records of men named Michael Keri. Unfortunately neither record mentioned a spouse or any other pertinent information. Were either of these men the person I sought?

I kept looking until I found his wife’s death record. Her record had much more information on it. It said that she was the wife of the late Keri Mihály so I knew for sure that one of those two men was her husband, but which one?

Since HER death record said how long she had been married and how long she had been widowed, I put that information at the bottom of the following chart next to her name, Juhász Erzsébet. I also did a little arithmetic to try to determine which Kéri Mihály best fit the numbers on her death record and put their numbers above hers. Thus this chart compares information from the death records of these two men named Kéri Mihály who lived in the same town and died about the same time with the information given on Juhász Erzsébet’s death record.

Comparing Death Information from Erzsébet and Two Men Named Mihály

I’ve highlighted in green that one of the men more closely fit the number of years of marriage while the other man more closely fit the number of years she would have been widowed.

I wasn’t any closer to determining which of these two men was her husband than I was before! But then….Look at the house numbers! When I added the house numbers to the chart, it became very clear that her husband was the Michael Keri who died on 30 September 1868.

Many records do not even list house numbers, and when they are listed, they are often ignored. That one little puzzle piece made all the difference in determining who this man was. In future weeks I’ll write how I put other puzzle pieces together until I formed a much clearer picture of this man named Michael Keri.

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543 is made from three consecutive numbers so it is divisible by 3.

543 is the hypotenuse of the Pythagorean triple 57-540-543. Can you find the greatest common factor of those three numbers?

  • 543 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 543 = 3 x 181
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1 and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 2 = 4. Therefore 543 has exactly 4 factors.
  • Factors of 543: 1, 3, 181, 543
  • Factor pairs: 543 = 1 x 543 or 3 x 181
  • 543 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √543 ≈ 23.30236

522 Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök

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I’ll write about the family of Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök after I write a little bit about the number 522.

522 = 73 + 79 + 83 + 89 + 97 + 101 which is all the prime numbers between 72 and 102.

522 is the hypotenuse of the Pythagorean triple 360-378-522.

  • 522 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 522 = 2 x 3 x 3 x 29, which can be written 522 = 2 x (3^2) x 29
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 2, and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(2 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 3 x 2 = 12. Therefore 522 has exactly 12 factors.
  • Factors of 516: 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18, 29, 58, 87, 174, 261, 522
  • Factor pairs: 522 = 1 x 522, 2 x 261, 3 x 174, 6 x 87, 9 x 58, or 18 x 29
  • Taking the factor pair with the largest square number factor, we get √522 = (√9)(√58) = 3√58 ≈ 22.8473193

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Gustáv Forgon was two years younger than my husband’s second great-grandmother, Erzsébet Forgon. They were only seventh cousins, but most likely they still knew each other quite well as they both had the same surname and grew up as part of one of the most prominent noble families in the little Hungarian village called Mihályfalva.

When Gustáv grew up, he married. His marriage record is the third record on the page below and states that his marriage occurred in 1873 on February 12. The record states that the groom was the noble Gusztáv Forgon, the son of the late noble Miklós Forgon and the noble Sarlotta Bodon. The groom was born and raised in Mihályfalva and was 25 years old. The bride was Mária Csörnök, daughter of Márton Csörnök and Zsuzsánna Miko. She was born and raised in Alsó-Vály and was 17 years old on their wedding day. Click on the record to see it better.15

The couple settled in  Alsó-Vály where they had TWELVE children born before 1896.

1st. Their first son, Ignácz Gusztáv Forgon, was born on 10 February 1875 and baptized two days later. His birth is the 5th entry on the page below. They lived in house #3 in Alsó-Vály.

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2nd. Curiously they named their second son Gusztáv when he was born on 25 August 1876 and baptized two days later. His birth is the 3rd entry on the page below.

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3rd. On 5 March 1879 the couple was blessed to have a daughter. They named her Apollónia Forgon, which was the same name as her godmother. Apollónia was christened two days after she was born as indicated on the 6th entry of the year. There is also a comment in the right margin: +1922 is all that I can read of it. It most likely indicates that she lived until 1922.

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On 10 April 1881 Mária’s father, Márton Csörnök, died. He had been very weak for a while. Her parents had been married for 42 of his 62 3/4 years.

4th & 5th. On 19 May 1881 Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök had twin boys! They named them István and Pál. The boys were christened the same day they were born as recorded on entries 7 and 8 below.

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Sadly István was very weak and died four days later on 1881 May 24. His death record is number 17, very close to the middle of the page.

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6th. Gizella was born on 11 March 1884 and baptized the next day. Her christening is the next to the last entry below.

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7th and 8th. Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök had another set of twins born on 13 April 1886. This time the twins were a boy and a girl, István and Mária. Their births are the 9th and 10th entry. Their deaths also came too early and are listed in the margins.

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This István was also very weak and died when he was only 10 days old on the 27 April 1886. His death record is third from the bottom of the page.

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Maria lived a little more than 9 months more than her twin, István, did. She died 1887 January 25 and was buried the next day. Her cause of death was listed as sínlődés. Online dictionaries were no help translating this word, but my very old and priceless Hungarian-English dictionary that a genealogist friend gave me equates the verb sínlődni and sínleni which means to be sickly, to be broken down in health, to languish. The record of her death is second from the top of the page.

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9th. A daughter, Irma, was born on 23 January 1888 and baptized the next day. She was the third baby christened in 1888.

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On 2 March 1890 Mária’s mother, Zsuzsánna Miko, died. Her death record stated that her mother was 69 years, 11 months, and 13 days old when she died. That was very important information because I could not find Márton Csörnök and Zsuzsánna Miko marriage record to learn the names of Zsuzsánna’s parents, and there were several people named Zsuzsánna Miko in the area. Now I know exactly who she is!

10th. The family’s house number changed from #3 to #4 when László was born 28 June 1890. His baptism was on 3 July as indicated in the next to last entry on the page below. I know for sure that László grew up, married, and now has many descendants.

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11th. The family’s house number is now #5. The family welcomed another little boy that they named István. He was born on 17 March 1894 and was baptized three days later as recorded on the 5th entry below. His death later that year is indicated in the margin as well.

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István died 17 October 1894 and was buried two days later. This István Forgon, age 5 months, died from weakness and was only the 15th death in the area that year.

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The record that was 3rd from the last on the same page (the 1st death record in 1895) is the death record for Gustáv’s widowed mother, Bodon Sarlolta, as it is spelled on this record. She was 72 years old when she died on 15 January 1895, and was buried two days later.

12th. Still living in house #5, the family welcomed Lajos who was born on 30 September 1895 and christened the next day. His was the 21st birth recorded in the book that year.

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To summarize I’ve made a chart showing the children born to Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök from 1875 to 1895:

I enjoy using old records to piece together a family to understand some of what they went through together. Imagining their joy when they married or had a newborn baby as well as their struggles and trials when a loved one died makes them become more than just a name and a date to me. I hope you enjoyed reading about this noble Hungarian family.

494 My First Microfilm Treasure Hunt

/ ivasallay / 1 Comment

494 is the hypotenuse of one Pythagorean triple: 190-456-494. What is the greatest common factor of those three numbers?

  • 494 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 494 = 2 x 13 x 19
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 1, and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8. Therefore 494 has exactly 8 factors.
  • Factors of 494: 1, 2, 13, 19, 26, 38, 247, 494
  • Factor pairs: 494 = 1 x 494, 2 x 247, 13 x 38, or 19 x 26
  • 494 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √494 ≈ 22.22611

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Years ago my husband and I wanted to research his family tree so I decided to visit the Family History library in downtown Salt Lake City on 8 April 2010. At that time we knew the names of his four grandparents, his eight great-grandparents, and one great-great-grandfather. We knew all of these people were born in Hungary. The information we had was that two of his grandparents were born in a little town called Gyoma in what is now eastern Hungary. We had no idea where his other two grandparents were born. This day was the first time I ever looked at any Hungarian genealogical records. I knew maybe ten words in Hungarian, and I had never even seen similar records in English.

The records were recorded on microfilm which were sorted into Roman Catholic, Reformed Hungarian, Lutheran, and Jewish records. I had no idea what religion his ancestors were, but based on the number of microfilms available for each religion in Gyoma, chances were that they belonged to the Reformed Church. I found a microfilm with Kereszteltek (christening) records from 1883-1895. A volunteer showed me how to put the microfilm on a the reader, and I started looking. I made notes of which records interested me. It was so exciting to find records that had names of people I had heard stories about. It was my intention to photocopy as many family records as I could, scan them into my home computer, and email them to my son, David, who speaks Hungarian fluently but lived in Qatar at the time. However, when I went to make copies, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could actually copy the records directly onto a flash drive!

I emailed my son that the five hours I spent at the family history library were well spent. I didn’t find any of the christening records I was expecting to find but found about thirteen records of his ancestor’s siblings. I attached the records to the email and waited for morning to arrive in Qatar so he could reply.

The next day he emailed me back, “I only had time to look at the first four (records). I’ll check the rest later. I’ve written some notes below, but I should let you know that you basically just found four people who aren’t related to us.” He then wrote in English what each of the records said.

Later he emailed me, “To continue the bad news, Now that I look at all of them, I can see that they (the great-grandparents) are all listed as godparents. This should explain why you didn’t find much of what you were actually looking for. Now you know, and should be able to look for names in the right column.”

He sent me translations of the page headings so I wouldn’t go wrong in the future. The christening records were two pages wide. Here are the headings with his translations for the first page:

And here are the headings with translations for the 2nd page.

So there you have it. Since I knew so little Hungarian and so little about how christening records are organized, I thought the godparents were the parents.

I had to wait a whole week before I could go back to the library, but this first visit was not a total bust. We still learned a few things about my husband’s great-grandfather, Dániel Finta, that we didn’t know before. We learned that he worked in a factory making shoes because his profession was given next to his name on at least one record. We learned that Dániel was asked on several occasions to be a godfather. Sometimes his wife was the godmother with him, and sometimes his mother was. Because I found these records we now knew his mother’s name, Sára Bíró, as well. We also learned that Dániel belonged to the Reformed Church and his wife, Emília Pribelszky, was Lutheran.

I was grateful for what we had learned and anxious to return again.

How successful were you the first time you looked into your family history? If you were discouraged, please give it another try. It is so worth it. If you were successful, you know exactly what I mean.