I have been using Familysearch.org for the past few days looking up Slovak records. I go way back with these records when they were only microfilm and available in Salt Lake City. As a matter of fact, I know I was the first to use the four villages of my paternal great-grandparents because I had to order each microfilm from "the vault" the off-site depository for the Family History Library. In fact, it took me two visits to order all the films (I was working then and those were my vacations).
Eventually I used them all and even ordered them to New England via the NEHGS in Boston. Now those records are digitized and searchable. But are they?
I just ran a search on Matej (Matthias) Fusek. The first plus (and all my opinions are solely based on the protestant church records of Slovakia) is that a search for the given name Matej (in Slovak) yields hits on Matthias (Latin) and Matthew. Matej's marriage record is there from 1775 but his burial is not there from 1822. I doublechecked the burial record and it is right there.
I ran a search for George (yielding Georgius in Latin and Jiri and Juraj in Slovak) Balaz. You get 362 hits. You find his 1824 marriage which gives him as 20 years old son of George. But where is his baptism? Well, I hunted through the records and found it in Dec 1803 and that never comes up in the searches.
Now there are variations in spelling of Balaz such as Balas, Balass, Bales, etc. But the hits seem to pick up the soundex variations of spellings.
Nicely,the parish records are transcribed now when you browse them so that if handwriting is not clear you can get an approximation of the name you are looking at.
Over three days, I found several records that help me push my Balaz line back one generation. All other searches for death records and baptism records failed. Now the records may not exist. But based on my searches, I am not confident that the search engine is returning all pertinent hits.
The search box is also basic. First name, Last name, Place, and Year. Something more robust should be offered. For instance I found the marriage record of George Balaz and Elisabeth Siska in 1824. She is given as the daughter of Paul. So I want to search all Elisabeth Siskas with a father of Paul. I can't do that. Just her name. And when I search her for her marriage, it doesn't come up. So is that you can search grooms and not brides? That doesn't seem right. Or does the indexing be so literal that the record say Elisabeth daughter of Paul Siska and they don't index under her surname?
Questions, questions. At least you can browse the records yourself. It takes time but it is the most thorough way to do it.
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