^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

As you can see, we had one month exceeding 10,000 unique Visitors and averaged nearly 9,000 a month for the year. This is a relatively large average increase of about 929 visitors/month over the 2014 average (an 11.6% rise). Such a level of increase (for a second year in a row) was a pleasant surprise!

Like last year, usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web Browser is down as it continues its slide into oblivion: only 8% this year from 19% last year, 41% two years ago and over 50% in prior years. Firefox slipped two percentage points from last year but Safari rose 1% and Google Chrome 7%, with the "Other" browser category also going up 1%.

As for Computer Operating Systems, our visitors continue to predominantly use Windows-based computers (69% on average), with the Mac and Linux (Unix) operating systems trailing quite distantly. Interestingly, the "Unknown" (cell phone?) operating system percentage went down from 3 to 2%.



About the BB Staff: As I have noted many times, the BB staff is a fluid collection of individuals who, over varying tenures, voluntarily give back to our community a bit of what they have learned while on their personal journey of family-history discovery. Until a few days ago, my lead-in sentence to the rest of this section was: "While our 'formal' letterhead staff remained constant this year, we did suffer an important loss among "informal" staff with the death of Joe Jarfas in August." However, as of December 25th, that sentence became inaccurate... I'll complete my thoughts about Joe and the changes associated with it, before telling you about a change to our "formal letterhead staff."

Joe Jarfas was one of my go-to correspondents when I needed to understand something "Hungarian" or needed to translate an obtuse official Hungarian document ...I could always depend on him to teach me something while being a joy to correspond with. Joe was born in 1936 in Szombathely, Hungary, but escaped to Germany during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising; he made his way to the US in 1961. The BB and all his friends mourn his passing.

However, as so often when one is taken, another arrives to fill the void: Réka Kieß, who has a post-graduate degree in the field of Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarian as well as expertise in paleography (the study of ancient and historical handwriting) and fluency in English, became a BB member in April 2014 and had made an occasional comment on newsletter articles, including a comment in August this year saying that, "Should any of the members abroad need some help in the future with Hungarian translation, please do not hesitate to provide them with my email address. I would be happy to help as I know myself how difficult it is at times to understand complex sentences that dictionaries are not useful for." She currently works in the Somogyi Károly Regional Library in Szeged, Hungary, particularly in the special historical collections of the Somogyi Foundation. I quickly enlisted her as my resource for Hungarian transcription, translation and more.

Now for the change to the formal staff: Members Editor, Hannes Graf, wrote to me on Christmas Day saying that he must give up his duties as a BB Editor. Hannes' eyesight has been deteriorating for some time and he now sees "every letter like from behind a milkglass, and it is hurting me ...maybe it will become better, but it is time to stop everything that is hurting me." Some months ago, he warned me about his eyes and said our BB was the last of his computer-based activities. But now it too must go.

I've said this before but I'll say it again here: Hannes was a major, major contributor to the BB and the resources on its website. Over two stretches with the BB, the first beginning in 2001, Hannes served as a staff member for a total of 13 years and 7 months, a time period exceeding that of founder Gerry Berghold by over a year! He was Newsletter Editor for two years, co-Webmaster for over four years, Members Editor for many years, and he has contributed numerous other BB webpages and the content that fills them.

Hannes has been my friend and a true friend to the BB membership throughout this time... so it is sad to see him forced to drop out. I send my thanks to Hannes and invite each of you to do the same (you can write to him at hannes.graf@the-burgenland-bunch.org ...but do so soon before he stops all email).

Hannes asks that someone volunteer to take over his duties as Membership Editor, a role I will assume in the interim (if you do wish to consider volunteering, please contact me via the email address at the top of this newsletter for details about what is involved).

I'll close this section by saying that the BB would not exist without such giving, knowledgeable people as Hannes, Réka Kieß or Joe Jarfas! My thanks to all the BB staff members, formal and informal!



BB Website and Organizational Events: From a website perspective, I'm pleased to recognize a number of additions to our ever-growing collection of Burgenland-related information, as well as other associated items:

►Spam & Phishing: In January, we modified some pages on the BB website to further frustrate electronic harvesting of BB member email addresses. Although we had installed anti-robot code on the BB webpages for this purpose in 2006, somehow one set of pages retained attackable email addresses... and, after nine years, we suffered a minor exploit because of this oversight. The fix was simple and was quickly done so, hopefully, we will go another nine years without a successful attack. Do remember, however, that, as this cartoon suggests, you are the most important tool in avoiding problems.

►"The Burgenländer Emigration to America" (by Dr. Walter Dujmovits): Following the outstanding 2014 first-year sales of 761 copies of the book (an average of over 63 books/month), the sales rate slowed to around 15 books/month, with 197 copies total being purchased in 2015 (18 copies this month, both numbers as of Dec 29). Our current total sales is 958 copies, so the thousand-book mark should easily fall in 2016! Who'da thunk'it?

As you may recall, the BB's decision was to sell the book at its wholesale production cost of just $7.41 (plus any tax & shipping), as our goal was wide circulation rather than profit (so we earn absolutely nothing from book sales and you get an inexpensive opportunity to learn about the forces that led your ancestors to leave their homeland).

The book is the definitive history of the emigration of Burgenländers to the Americas, written by the leading authority on the subject. The BB is pleased to have been instrumental in bringing this material to English-reading audiences and we recommend that you, if you have not already, treat yourself to a copy... call it a late Christmas present to yourself!

►Burgenland Church Names Project: A project was undertaken (and completed) to add church names to our Villages pages. Generally, parish churches/synagogues are referred to by the name of the village they are in and their religious affiliation, but it is still nice to know the associated dedication name (if any). That was the purpose of this effort. The database now includes parish churches/synagogues plus Catholic filial (branch) churches or Lutheran tochter (daughter) bethausen (prayer houses) where formal services are regularly held (usually once a month)... but no chapels. Some 290 mother or branch Catholic churches, 79 Lutheran prayer houses or churches (including one Reformed), and 11 former Jewish synagogues are now documented (380 in total).

►Burgenland DNA Study Expansion: In March of 2015, the scope of the Burgenland DNA Study was expanded to include women in the testing process. Formerly, the Study was restricted to males via testing of Y-DNA, the gene passed from father to son and giving the strictly-paternal ancestral line origins. After the expansion, testing can now be done on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is genetic material that is associated with the female side of the family and giving the strictly-maternal ancestral line origins (while both men and women can have an mtDNA test performed, only women can pass mtDNA to children). In addition, men or women who have had autosomal (atDNA) testing done can be included in the Study. Unlike Y-DNA and mtDNA, atDNA will give you a composite of your origins rather than just the strict maternal or paternal lines.

At the time I'm write this, the Study has 154 unique participants with 135 having Y-DNA results, 36 having mtDNA results, and 32 having atDNA results (these counts, of course, imply that some participants have multiple types of results stored in the Study).

►BB HouseLists Project Completed: The core of an important BB project was completed in May 2015. This project is what we call the BB HouseLists. The HouseLists are transcriptions of the 1856-1858 Burgenland land register records found in the Österreichisches Bundesamt für Eich- und Vermessungswesen Katastral mappenarchiv. For a few villages where the 1856-58 records were not available, we substituted Hungarian records from the 1910-1911 period. A very few villages have lists from additional periods. The lists generally consist of the names of property-owning heads-of-households in the village, though sometimes they include additional information such as spouse names, house names, or social status information.

The project was begun by Klaus Gerger in 2000 and a number of BB members contributed transcriptions over the years to help complete the project. A count shows 241 Burgenland villages listed (plus two Hungarian border villages), of which all but 2 have at least one Houselist file from 1856-58 or 1910-11 (the two missing villages are Markt Allhau and Neudörfl, however, we have substituted a 1720 Urbar listing for each of these). In addition, some villages have more than one Houselist file (representing different time points, usually Urbars). There are 33 of these "extra" lists in all, raising the total Houselist count to 273.

►HUNGARICANA Tutorials: In June of 2015, we added links to a new Hungarian site (English main page at http://hungaricana.hu/en/) that is "the common website of Hungarian archives, museums and libraries, operated by the Hungarian Library of Parliament (Országgyűlési Könyvtár)." Since most documents therein are in Hungarian, Latin or German and the majority of the operational information is presented in Hungarian, I decided to do some mini-tutorials, picking one topic and providing enough information in an article to get users started.

The tutorials completed so far are for:

* The 1767 Urbarium database, found at http://archives.hungaricana.hu/en/urberi/

* The Maps database, found at http://maps.hungaricana.hu/en/

* The 1720 and 1715 Urbárium databases on the Hungarian National Archives' AdatbázisokOnline (Databases Online) site, found at http://193.224.149.8/adatbazisokol/adatbazis/az-1715_-evi-orszagos-osszeiras/ and http://193.224.149.8/adatbazisokol/adatbazis/az-1720_-evi-orszagos-osszeiras/

In addition, an important supporting document for the Urbariums is an article titled "Cross-Reference of Urbárial Village Names" and found at http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Newsletter/Newsletter259.htm#05.

►Father Joseph Graisy Biography: A biography of Father Joseph Graisy was written and added to the BB webpages for Graisy's book, called "Wallern in der Geschichte seiner Häuser; eine Studie über die Entwicklung von Wallern in der Zeit von 1683-1914" (Wallern in the History of its Houses; a Study about the Development of Wallern at the Time from 1683 to 1914). The pages are at the-burgenland-bunch.org/Father-Graisy/Book.html (also here: the-burgenland-bunch.org/HG/HG-Father-Graisy/FGB.htm).

Although the book is written in German, the key information is in tabular format and fairly easy to decipher, especially if you look up a few key, frequently used German words (the online Google Translate should suffice). It is an essential resource if you have ancestors from Wallern!