Metadata: Congregation records
Collection
- Country:
- Hungary
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of Hungary, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Archives, Nyíregyháza
- Holding institution (official language):
- Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Megyei Levéltára, Nyíregyháza
- Postal address:
- 4400 Nyíregyháza, Széchenyi u. 4
- Phone number:
- +36 42 414 313
- Web address:
- http://www.szabarchiv.hu/drupal/elerhetosegunk
- Email:
- szszbml@mnl.gov.hu
- Reference number:
- IV.A.501.a
- Title:
- Congregation records
- Title (official language):
- Közgyűlési jegyzőkönyvek
- Creator/accumulator:
- Szatmár county
- Date(s):
- 1593/1848
- Language:
- Latin
- Hungarian
- German
- Extent:
- 9.7 linear metres (165 volumes)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The 'Congregation records' collection includes the documents of congregations of nobilities from the period of 1593-1848. The collection is part of the extensive collection of 'Documents of the Congregations of Nobilities in Szatmár County' maintained in the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county archives.
The 'Congregation records' collection is incomplete. Most of the records are to be found in the Hungarian National Archives in Nyíregyháza, but some of them are held in the Archives of Cluj (Kolozsvár) in Romania. The records comprise the congregation documents. About 165 volumes are available in Hungary. Although the title of the collection refers to 1593-1848, in reality, the records from 1787-1789 are unavailable. Congregations of nobilities constituted the intermediate level of public administration towards the end of the feudal administration system, and they fulfilled the roles of both public administration and jurisdiction. The documents include submissions to congregations, investigations, notifications, reports, lists of tax assessments and liabilities. In addition, they include orders of emissaries, reports, correspondence with other counties, commands of the Royal Council of Governor-general, information on the operation of guilds or related commands, information on transport (roads, bridges) and various types of inventories. The subjects of the documents of general and partial congregations include contracts, promissory notes, debt securities, decisions about debts and collections, bankruptcy proceedings, cases of trespassing, lawsuits of landlords and tenants of farming leases, service obligations imposed on peasants, issues of insurrection, conscriptions of tenants, surveys of estates, provisions and equipment for noble insurgents, appointment of officials, recruitment, enlisting of new soldiers, promotion of handcraft industry, regulations and rules regarding guilds and religious affairs. The documents were written in mostly Hungarian, but some of them are in Latin and German. The volumes of the source material include the congregation meetings in certain years in chronological order.
Jewish-related entries are scattered and can be found in 165 volumes. Their number is approximately 6,541. The first relevant entry is from 1699 and deals with Polish Jews. The number of records increased considerably from the end of the 18th century, which was the result of the settlement of the Jewish population in the county and the priority status they gained in public life. These entries are similar to the others in the collection: they comprise orders imposed on the Jews by the Council of Governor-General or the county, inventories, lists of tax assessments, information, reports and petitions submitted by Jewish citizens. The remaining documents are very diverse: information on migration, petitions for settlement, warrants for escapees, search for foreign escapees, farming leases contracted with landlords and lawsuits related to them, contracts, debt certificates, business relationships with the members of the local community and also with the county, commercial activities (peddling, small and wholesale trading), handicraft trade, cowhide purchase, conflicts with guilds, schedules for debt payment or collection, crimes where victims could also be the perpetrators, horse theft, murders, use of fake money, taxation imposed on Jewish citizens, rate of tolerance tax, the volume and recovery of arrears, obligation for the recruitment of soldiers, issues of inheritance, religious affairs, community cases and issues of conversion. The groups of various subjects highlight that both the issues of public administration and jurisdiction are available in the collection. Geographically speaking, the records illustrate the settlement patterns of the Jewish community in Szatmár County: the vast majority of records refer to members of the Jewish community and society living under the authority of Nagykároly domain, but they describe the situation and activities of Jewish inhabitants in numerous smaller settlements. The entries predominantly refer to individuals rather than communities. The collection is a valuable resource as it contains entries that include exact copies of internal sources: for example, several farming lease tenants in the Jewish community in Nagykároly entered into contracts with landlords. Local censuses contain lists of Jewish names (although they mostly list men’s names). The documents were written mainly in Latin and Hungarian, sometimes alternately. The Jewish-related records were often written in German. The perpetuation of family names in the Jewish society is traceable in Szatmár County.
- Archival history:
- The document collection of Szatmár County is based on documents preserved by county officials as no archives had been established before the 16th century. Therefore, mostly congregation records were collected in Szatmár County at the beginning. The categorisation of the collected materials started under the rule of Maria Theresa (1740-1780). The documents were also classified into subject groups at that time. The archives were established in Nagykároly and the documents collected previously were also held there. The emergence of the new borders after World War I resulted in the division of the archived documents and also the relocation of the archives. Part of the materials remained in Hungary, whereas the other part was taken to Romania. Documents of the congregation of nobilities were also divided regardless of their timespan. Due to air raids, the materials owned by Hungary were moved to Zajta in 1944 and then to Mátészalka during World War II. Finally, in 1950 they were placed in the newly established archives in Nyíregyháza where they are still held.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The records were maintained on the congregation sites, and then the papers were collected and bound together in chronological order. Entries from some years are missing: 1617-1628, 1657, 1731, 1751-53, 1787-1789. Some records referring to certain years came into the ownership of the Archives of Cluj (Kolozsvár) in Romania after cataloguing in the wake of World War I: years 1841-42, 1847 and one partial congregation collection from 1845.
- Access points: locations:
- Nagykároly
- System of arrangement:
- The records comprise the materials of both general and partial congregations. They are bound and edited differently in each period. Typically each dossier comprises documents broken down by months, year by year, in chronological order. Initially the volumes included materials for numerous years, e.g. volume 1 contains the registers for 1593-1616. However, after 1792 records of one year were regularly covered in two volumes. The volumes feature the continuous lists of subsequent congregation records with their serial numbers. The period of 1782-1785 is an exception to this, as the records are listed according to their subject headings in alphabetical order on a yearly basis.
- Finding aids:
- Handbooks for the years 1792-1800 only are available in the a Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county archives, Nyíregyháza. They are in hard copy, written in Hungarian and Latin. Index books for the records can be found in the Archives of Kolozsvár (Cluj). Jewish-related records are to be found under the headword ‘Judeaorum’ in almost all years.
- Yerusha Network member:
- University of Szeged
- Author of the description:
- Dr. Tibor Almási and Dr. Erzsébet Mislovics, University of Szeged, 2019
