You may know that ProGenealogists is the official genealogy research firm associated with genealogy giant Ancestry.com. What you may not know is that ProGenealogists has some great, free information for genealogy researchers available on its web site. For example, if you have Hungarian ancestry there is a page with quite a bit of useful information about tracing your Hungarian roots.
Although I do not have any Hungarian ancestors, I decided to take a look at the Hungarian genealogy resources offered by ProGenealogists because it is similar to the offerings that they have made available for other nations. I found a list of libraries and archives in Hungary, an article about how to use Hungarian census data, and a bunch of other helpful things.
While I was reading about Hungarian genealogical research, I learned a few things about the nation itself. Hungary has gone through a lot of changes over the years, from fluctuating boundaries to name changes to changes in the political regime. This indicates that you may come up against some difficulties in your research if you are looking for Hungarian ancestors. A person who resided in the area that is now referred to as Hungary may have stated his or her place of residence at one time as Slovenia or Croatia even though they lived in the same house for their entire life. Maps of modern Hungary are often not useful when researching where people lived a few generations ago. If you are having a hard time tracking down your Hungarian ancestors, do not despair. Try a few different approaches and if you are really stuck, you may wish to enlist the services of a professional genealogist for the limited purpose of getting you through to the next level of your research. Of course, the genealogists at ProGenealogists are always at the ready to help with those kinds of things and there are other professional genealogists out there who may be able to assist you.
Photo by karpati on morguefile.com.