Transylvanian Roots

In our days to know where someone comes from is becoming ever so important. Worldwide there are several portals which specialize in providing access to old population registers to anyone by easy access to digitized or scanned data. Unfortunately this service is in a primordial stage in Romania. In Transylvania the right to keep population registers was granted by Joseph the 2nd to the protestant churches in the year 1785. But it many settlements, population registers were kept much before this date. The Roman Catholic Church, the Reformed Church and the Unitarian Church started keeping these registers since the 18th century. It is true, that these were not kept in all villages since the 1700’s, but after 1800 all priests were keeping such registers in their diocese. The majority of these documents were then transferred to the local major’s offices and from there they were taken to the County Archives. The National Register was introduced in 1894 with the 33rd order, and beginning from the 1st of October 1895 it has been in use. From this date the registers are kept at the Town Halls. Firstly we would like to catalog and digitize those registers, family registers and censuses, which are not located in the National Archives. These documents are very important, very valuable and extremely fragile and sensitive and their future is uncertain. These activities will be certainly extended to the digitizing of the registers and documents from the National Archives as well. This is a very meticulous, responsible and time consuming work, which requires a lot of professionalism, focus and devotion.