The following new data bases have been launched recently at WorldVitalRecords.com.

New Newspapers:

WorldVitalRecords.com loves newspapers, and we hope you do too! Here are our latest data sets, totaling more than 2.4 million new names!!!

• ID Adams County Record
(Council, Idaho)
• AZ Ajo Copper News
(Ajo, Arizona) UPDATE
• KY Bath County News-Outlook (Owingsville, Kentucky)
• NH Bedford Journal
(Bedford, New Hampshire)
• WI Blair Press
(Blair, Wisconsin) UPDATE
• IA Boyden Reporter
(Boyden, Iowa)
• MN Cold Spring Record
(Cold Spring, Minnesota)
• IA Danish Villages Voice
(Elk Horn, Iowa)
• IA Elk Horn Kimballton Review
(Elk Horn, Iowa)

Total Records: 809,869
Total Names: 2,429,607

Genealogical Tip: Slovakian Family Vital Records Link Generations
By Amanda Forson, WorldVitalRecords.com

This past week, my father came into town to celebrate the holidays. As part of the celebration, I decided that he needed to see some of the discoveries concerning his family’s direct lines. Researching last year, I found the proper microfilm for his grandfather’s family in the town of Nadlice (Nadlany) in the area of Trencin, within Slovakia.

Scan of the record

Translation of the record

Background
Slovakian records are hard to find as a rule. Although the topography never changed, the geo-political boundaries fluctuated on a regular basis. Some of these changes include the Great Moravian Empire during the Middle Ages to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to being swallowed up within Hungary, and then more recently being a part of Czechoslovakia until the early 1990’s when it finally became the independent country of Slovakia.

Within this framework, there is the ethnic majority of Slovakians ruled by people (minorities within the territory when they settled there) who at different times spoke German or Hungarian. Besides these official languages, there are minor dialects of Slovakian depending upon the region within the geo-political boundaries. Religion plays a large role in the lives of the people. The majority of Slovakians are Roman Catholic. There are minorities of Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox, Jews, and other Protestants, but most church records for the majority of the inhabitants are recorded in Latin.

What I found was the baptismal record of my grandfather written in a combination of Latin with Hungarian and Slovak. I had not examined previously examined the record thoroughly, and explaining it to my father helped determine that this was the right child. Since there were two children born in the same year with the same name, my future research strategy included searching through other children of the same parents in an effort to establish family naming patterns utilizing already-known brothers and sisters of my great-grandfather. These children would be found in other parts of the town’s metrical books within the collections of the Family History Library, ordered during the previous year to my particular local family history center.

Results
Once shown, my father was interested in the record and would not have understood it had I not been there to explain it to him. Seeing that was the case, he had me write a transcription and translation of the document to email to other relatives who would also be interested in the found record. The transcription and translation are attached to this article along with the record image.

My father previously showed cursory interest in his family’s history. He had interest, but neither the time nor patience to devote to the research required to prove the family lines. When he saw the results, however, he instantly decided to print the largest scale copy of the record that was possible. For the family history center where we viewed the record, that would be an 18”x 24”copy printed on vinyl-backed paper, a specialty of this particular family history center. From there, we continued with mounting the large copy onto foam board eventually framing it. Currently, the framed record and transcription copy hangs outside the office of WorldVitalRecords.com’s chairman as an example of the kinds of records that WorldVitalRecords looks forward to aiding subscribers with using in the future.

A previous tip included the basic concept of sharing information once it is found. In the case of my family and this record, finding it was a personal victory, but sharing it brought my father, his sister, a great-aunt and daughter of the child on the record, and my father’s cousin to new levels of awareness about their family. Personal applicability is the most effective way of increasing interest in family history. During this holiday season of families gathering and visiting, share the information gathered during research and see what happens when records link generations.