Slovak Historical Jurisdictions and Boundary Changes

Until 1895, when civil registration began, the church records served as the primary record source for the Slovak population. It is very important to know if the family was Jewish, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Evangelical or Reformed. An individual may have lived in one town, but the closest meeting for the affiliated congregation was in a neighboring town. The records then would not be a part of the town of residence, but a part of another town’s jurisdiction. Religion is often the key element in successful Hungarian family history research.

Two essential gazetteers for Slovak research are as follows: Magyarország Helységnévtára Ket Kotethen, by János Dvorzsák, is useful for pre-1919 locations, as they were part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Volume one serves as an index to all communities in the former empire, cross-referencing official names of the same locality. Volume two is accessed through numbers of county, district and town provided in volume one, and lists population count and locations where each religious denomination in that town met. The second essential source is Gazetteer Czechoslovakia: Official Standard Names Approved by the United States Board of Geographical Names. This government publication, produced by the Department of the Interior, allows a cross-reference between old town names and new town names.

Boundary Changes

Slovakia was integrated jurisdictionally with Hungary until the Treaty of Trianon in 1919, and many of Hungary’s research strategies apply to Slovakia. Despite this geographical integration, Slovakia was a nation unto its own in many ways, as linguistic and cultural characteristics segregated and defined the Slovaks from their Hungarian counterparts. In 1919, the former Hungarian counties (or portions thereof) of Zemplén, Sáros, Szepes, Abauj-Torna, Gömör, Árva, Liptó, Zólyom, Nógrád, Turóc, Bars, Hont, Esztergom, Komárom, Trencsén, Nyitra, and Pozsony, were separated as the Slovak region of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. At that time, the inner areas of this region were re-defined into twenty counties, some retaining portions of their original Hungarian boundaries and similar names. In 1923, a more official geographical organization was inducted, defining three regions; West, Central, and East, and assigning an entirely new county boundary system allotting eleven, thirteen and fourteen counties respectively to these three regions. View a complete listing of these regions and the counties they preside over. (In Slovak, the term “county” is synonymous with “state,” both implying a region governing the towns within their jurisdiction.)