1869 Zemplen County Census - Slovakia, for the village of Vidrany

Transcribed by Don Carrera, November 14, 1998

Taken from LDS microfilm #0719798 of Vidrany, a village in eastern Slovakia, 2 miles from Medzilaborce

This is a companion census tally to the Medzilaborce and Palota ones that I made earlier this year.

Vidrany was a separate village in 1869, but is now incorporated into Medzilaborce.

The tally sheet formats were the same as for the Medzilaborce and Palota censuses

There are 172 microfilm rolls for the entire Zemplen census. Vidrany was the second town on this film.

This style of data sheet should have been wide-spread throughout Zemplen County for this census, so other villages should have similar or identical tally sheets. The main tally sheet lists the house number, and the number and types of rooms in the house. There is a place for the street name (utca, utcza is the old spelling), but nothing was ever recorded in it,

Houses were numbered 1 to 53, except no #2, 47, or 52. This doesn't mean that the houses actually had a number on them. Most houses had 1 room (szoba); #19 and 29 had 2; #1, 3 and 18 had 4 rooms;. A few houses had a closet or storage room (kamra) in the house, and an entrance (eloszoba)

Only house #18 had a separate kitchen (konyha). This house had 2 widows and a widower living in it. It may have been similar to an apartment house. There was a space for the number of stalls (istallo) for animals and any feed storage area (csur). There were no animals in houses 3 or 20

A separate tally sheet for each house listed all of the animals that were owned. Totals for the village were:

There are 15 columns (takes 2 pages) for the family and individual records.

Column 0 lists the household number (e.g. 12-1 and 12-2 = House number 12, family 1 and family 2, sharing the same house)

Column 1 is the tally number for each individual in the different families

Column 2 lists the name of each individual, and any relationship to others in the group.

neje=wife; gyermekei = children; ezek = their, ennek = his/her; testver = sibling; annya = mother; sogor = brother-in-law

Column 3 shows the sex (ferfi = male; no= female)

Column 4 lists the year of birth

Column 5 gives the person's religion. (see below)

Column 6 -marital status (nos = married man; ferjezett = married woman; notlen = unmarried man; hajadon = unmarried woman) ozvegy = widow/widower;

Column 7 lists occupation - usually this column is for the business owners and skilled people.

Column 8 lists the occupations for unskilled (foldmuveles = farmer, haztartas = housewife; szolgal = maid; seged = helper

Column 9 lists county and village of birth. Most are from Mezolaborcz (usually abbreviated Labort)

Column 10 asks if the person is local (helybeli) or foreign (idegen)

Column 11 asks if their presence in town is for a short time or a long time (a visitor might be there for a week, month…)

Column 12 asks if their absence is for a short time or a long time (a resident might be gone for a job, or traveling).

Column 13 asks if the person can read, or can both read and write. Nem = no, tud = knows how to

Column 14 is for notes-is person blind, deaf, mute, dementia, a soldier, on leave, in reserves, discharged, an officer…I did not record data for this column

First name in each house listed is the reference for any family notes

I am tracing the family of Anna Csekan (born 1878 in Palota, so she is not on here); died in Pennsylvania 1925. Her Pennsylvania death certificate showed Vidrany as her birthplace. That is incorrect since there is no CSEKAN family in Vidrany.

There was only 1 handwriting style, and it was the same person who recorded the Medzilaborce census. There was little time spent on deciphering handwriting.

The first name Paraszkevia was listed for one woman. I questioned this as a valid first name in the Palota census, but it appears to be a good first name.

YOB = year of birth; GC = greek (gorog) catholic; M=jewish (religion of Mozes); RC = roman (romai) catholic

17% of the population was Jewish (57 out of 335), 3 were Roman Catholic.

Most of the school age children could not read or write.

I counted 335 people in town

The oldest resident was Itzko Mortkovits, house #30, born in 1780.

Average age was 22.0, median age was 19.5

Average household size is 335 / 52 = 6.4 This was a young village with large extended families, like Medzilaborce

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Vid2 =house list

Vid3 = alpha

Vid4 = age