Thanks to Chris Dunham's Genealogy Blog Finder an entry caught my eye. The Photo Corner section of Ancestry's Family History Circle blog published a photo of the Csõre - Juhász couple, who left Hungary's Mucsony to come to the States - and then went back to the old country.

I read at Dick Eastman that thanks to Ancestry the gates are wide open for folks wishing to dig around in Ancestry.com's largely expanded database of US ports.

According to MyFamily's press release the collection now counts 100 million passenger records, the time period has been expanded 1820-1960 and also, more ports have been added. Free access is provided through the end of November.

In a quick search I noticed that while the Ellis Island database (through Steve Morse, of course) included the passenger's original settlement, that of Ancestry only showed the nationality of the person I was looking at - at least in a record from the first decade of the 20th century.

The copy machine repairman hired by the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma has been charged with stealing precious old documents from their collections. Using the lack of supervision - according to the charge - he was able to take away old charters several occasions.

The good news is that none of the archival materials have been lost, all of them could be found. The estimated value of the stolen documents is about $600,000.

The most outstanding from the set of the stolen rarities is a charter issued in about 1090. This is Hungary's oldest known charter with a seal of the king.

(Source of info in Hungarian)

RootsTelevision was launched a few weeks ago. They offer clips to help genealogy research. Family history promoter, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak (the lady with Rusyn ancestry) is one of staff behind RootsTelevision.

It was refreshing to discover Jordan Auslander as one of the people in the clips. He actually has two clips on the site as of today. (I'm sure there are more to come.)

I know Jordan's name as an ocassional poster on the listserv of H-SIG of Jewishgen, and also for his book Genealogical Gazetteer of the Kingdom of Hungary. Put the surname Auslander and Hungary into the search form of your favorite online bookshop to find a copy of the book. Jordan has ancestry in the Zakarpattia part of the Ukraine, the former NE part of Hungary.

Both of his clips on RootsTelevision were taken in a busy New York street. He talks about how to approach relatives and how important it is to interview them.

To find his appearances go to RootsTelevision, click on the Roots Living tab, then to the Shorts: Heir Jordan, Extreme Genealogy and Extreme Genealogy 2.

Hey, there is even a backdoor to RootsTelevision:
Extreme Genealogy (1), and Extreme Genealogy 2.

One of our fellow listers on the Csaladtortenet mailing list posted a page that is a collection of a dozen or so names whose heirs are unknown. The deceased persons were all born in Hungary.

Probate services like Budapest's Family Tree, Ltd. has been in this industry for a couple of years now. They specialize in finding relatives/heirs of persons linked to Eastern Europe.

This posted service of the Consular Service of the Hungarian Ministry for Foreign Affairs contains approaches of foreign legal services trying to establish the links with would-be claimants.

Heirs are sought.