If you have ancestors from the slice of Europe which is currently Zakarpattia Oblast (Ukraine), was Podkarpatská Rus (Czechoslovakia) between WWI and WWII, and which was part of Hungary before that, then prepare to get excited. After this area became part of the newly-formed country of Czechoslovakia after WWI, the new government conducted a census in 1921 to get a handle on their population. A fellow Subcarpathian researcher let me know that this is now online, and OMG, is this incredible.
Part of Lajzer Ruttner’s Family, 1921 Czechoslovakian Census, Dulfalva/Dulovo |
The amount of information contained in these lists is enormous. I’ll talk about what each of these columns means, but first, here are some directions to find your own family.
- Go to https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/KarpataljaiNepszamlalas1921/
- Scroll down below the introductory language, and you’ll see the different districts (járás). If you don’t know what járás your town was in, there’s a great page that breaks them down here.
- Once you’ve clicked on your járás, find your town–with its Hungarian name. Click and then browse through the documents!
For the towns I’ve looked through, it looks like the first pages are just lists of heads of household, followed by the more comprehensive census sheets. For my towns, there didn’t seem to be any correlation between names in the list and the order of the following census sheets, but at least it’ll let you know if your family will be found and it’s worth the time.
As far as language, some are written in Slovak (like the image above, so English-speakers will be able to easily read the names), but other towns are enumerated in Ukrainian, so you’ll need to know (Google Translate or Facebook groups can be helpful) what your surname of interest looks like in Ukrainian.
The entries go across two pages. Here are what the columns are (these may different by town, but they seem accurate for the few towns I’ve browsed through):
- Number of person
- Surname
- Given name
- Relationship (to head of house)
- Sex
- Marital Status
- Date of Birth
- Place of Birth
- Date of first registration
- Place of registration
- Nationality
- Religion
- Profession
- Province
- County
- Village Council
- Village
- Street/House number
- Name of House Owner
Some disclaimers:
- Birth dates/places may be wrong. For some people, I have their birth records, and they are on different dates and sometimes different villages than are listed. Like any other census, the data is only as good as what was provided and what was recorded
- For some towns, the writing is very faded and difficult to read.
- But this is still huge!
Here’s part of my favorite find–my great-great grandparents. It also shows you how many columns with information are included!
Mosko and Ruchel Ruttner, 1921 Czechoslovakian Census. My great-great grandparents |
Happy hunting! Please comment below if you find your family.
Source: 1921 Czech Census for Podkarpatská Rus (Now Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine), Online!