Romania

Our Romanian & Transylvanian Family Roots

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The Corvin Castle (also known as Hunyad Castle) in Transylvania

Updates At The End

This is a follow-up to a previous post extending our family lineage deep into Romania. This post explores more about our ancestral homeland and what events drew our family to America early in the 20th century, specifically to Cleveland, Ohio. So let’s begin with where the last post left off – the locations in Romania our family lines come from.

There are three family names which we traced through Romanian marriage records to specific cities or towns in modern Romania:

  • Herczog: From Tirol (Romanian), also known as Kiralye-Kegye (Hungarian) and Koenigsgnad (German). The family used the Hungarian variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Hungarian roots.
  • Naszt: From Lugoj (Romania), also known as Lugos (Hungarian) and Lugosch (German). The family used the Hungarian variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Hungarian roots
  • Hollendschwandner: From Valiug (Romanian), also known as Ferencalva (Hungarian) and Franzdorf (German). The family used the German variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Germanic roots.

Lugoj Tirol is located in the Romanian County of Timis, while the others are located in the Romanian County of Caras-Severin. All three lines converge in Rescita, Romania where all the marriages took place from which we traced back the family “origins”.

The following map lays out these four locations in modern day Romania (click to enlarge):

Rescita_Lugoj_Valiug_Tirol
Read more →

Previously Unknown “Fleger” Generations

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Major Update:

As I continued to investigate the new Romanian records on Ancestry.com, a fact that I should have known by now jumped out at me when I read the Birth Certificate for my great grandmother:

Hermine_Felix_BC_2

What we have is a set of twins – Hermine and Felix Naszt – born January 2nd, 1880.  As everyone in our family knows my wife and I are proud parents of a set of identical twins. So having this fact elude me for years is actually quite funny (yes, I have had the correct birth dates for Hermine and Felix, just never noticed they were identical).

End Update

As I noted in a previous post about my grandfather – Anthony Alfred Fleger – my mother’s maiden name (Fleger) is not her biological grandfather’s surname. Her biological grandfather was Antonin Herzcog.  We know this from my grandfather’s birth certificate my mother still has in her possession.

anthony_herczog_bc

The birth certificate, issued in 1936, clearly lists my grandfather’s birth name as “Antonin Herczog”, his father as “Antonin Herzcog” and his mother as “Hermine Naszt”. The birth location is Rescita, Caras-Severin, Romania:

Resita_Map Read more →