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

This newsletter concerns:

1) THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

2) THE YEAR IN REVIEW: ORGANIZATION

3) THE YEAR IN REVIEW: NEWSLETTER

4) ETHNIC EVENTS

5) BURGENLAND EMIGRANT OBITUARIES (courtesy of Bob Strauch)

Although we had one month exceeding 10,000 unique Visitors this year (we had none last year) and we averaged 8,454 visitors per month for the year (about 278 per day), this was actually a slight decrease compared to 2017 in average visitors per month (down 540/month). I suspect that much of the drop was driven by the issues leading up to a change in our newsletter-notification software (a newsletter notification was delayed two weeks), the loss of some email addresses during the changeover, and the fact that the new system is much quicker to drop an email address as "bad" than the prior software. Overall, there was not a lot of difference between years and no noticeable ongoing trend was apparent.

As for Computer Operating Systems, our visitors continue to predominantly use Windows-based computers (62% on average, but down 6% from 2017), with the Mac and Linux (Unix) operating systems still trailing quite distantly (but gaining 4 and 1%, respectively, compared to last year).

Like last year, usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web Browser continues its slide into oblivion: still rounding up to 2% this year but down from the 2+%, 4%, 8%, 19%, 41% and over 50% of prior years. Safari (similar to the Mac OS) showed a noticeable gain of 4% while Google Chrome and Firefox/Mozilla slipped 1 and 2%, respectively.



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.

During this past year, we lost two staff members: Surnames and Villages Editor, Rachel Rein, with us only 6 months, resigned to commit more time to her other interests; and BB Austrian Editor, Fritz Königshofer, retired from the staff after a 20-year stint! Fritz was the sole remaining member of Gerry Berghold’s first announced staff, leaving me as the now-longest active-tenure staff member (at 18+ years, with VP Klaus Gerger just 3 months behind).

We also had two staff members reduce or change their staff role. Margaret Kaiser had faithfully welcomed new members for a number of years... but doing this and her other BB tasks became too much. She remains as a Contributing Editor on the BB staff, performing her roles as Szt. Gotthard/Jennersdorf and FamilySearch editors. In addition, Johnny Santana stepped down from the Members Editor role due to work constraints... but continues as our Facebook Liaison.

However, when life has caused the BB to lose staff members, others have stepped forward to fill the void. We welcomed three new members to the BB staff in 2018: Patrick Kovacs, Vanessa Sandhu and Gerald Antal Gamauf.

Patrick Kovacs is now the BB’s New Member Greeter (more formally listed as “New Member Outreach”), replacing Margaret in that role. He now welcomes new members, reviewing their registration forms for completeness and accuracy, and providing initial direction to appropriate resources.

Vanessa Sandhu took on the BB’s Email List Manager role (replacing me), keeping our email list up-to-date by adding new and deleting old addresses. More recently, Vanessa also became our Facebook Reporter, providing information about activities on the BB-affiliated Facebook page for the BB Newsletter.

Gerald Gamauf became our new BB Membership Editor, replacing Johnny in the task of keeping our BB Membership pages up-to-date.

Over time, 35 different individuals have served on the BB staff (though Hannes Graf has the distinction of serving over two separate intervals, thus being both the 16th and 29th sequential staff members and having retired twice!).

In order of joining the staff, these are the current 14 staff members: Tom Steichen, Klaus Gerger, Bob Strauch, Margaret Kaiser, John Lavendoski, Frank Paukowits, Emmerich Koller, Alan Varga, Wilhelm Schmidt, Terry McWilliams, Johnny Santana, Patrick Kovacs, Vanessa Sandhu and Gerald Gamauf.

In order of retirement from the staff, these are our 21 retirees: Ernest Chrisbacher, Albert Schuch, Hap Anderson, Bill Rudy, Frank Teklits, Dale Knebel, Gerry Berghold, Anna Kresh, Hannes Graf (1st time), Charles Wardell, Heidi Hermann, Bob Unger, Maureen Tighe-Brown, Ron Markland, Barbara Raabe, Hannes Graf (2nd time), Matt Boisen, Steve Geosits, Mary Reilly, Tom Glatz, Rachel Rein, and Fritz Königshofer.

In addition, we remain blessed to have ongoing assistance of additional individuals who, though not on the formal staff, still provide regular service to the organization and its members. Current such individuals include Réka Kiesz, Julia Szent-Gyorgyi, and the leadership of the BB Facebook page.

I'll close this section by saying that the BB would not exist without the giving, knowledgeable people named in the above lists! My sincere thanks go to all our BB staff members and supporters, both former and current.



BB Website Events: Here are the more significant items from 2018:

►Tenth Anniversary of Gerald Berghold's Death: Gerald J "Gerry" Berghold died August 29, 2008, at age 77, having founded the Burgenland Bunch more than eleven years before, on January 11, 1997. The August issue of the BB Newsletter was dedicated solely to remembering Gerry.

►Tenth Anniversary of BH&R affiliating with the Burgenland Bunch: It was 2008 when the "Burgenländers Honored and Remembered" (BH&R) website moved to the BB server and became an affiliate. BH&R had its birth in 2004 as an independent project started by Frank Paukowits ...but was foundering in 2008 due to a lack of technical support. Since joining with the BB, the count of honorees has grown from 3,000 to over 24,000 and the project remain both vital and valuable!

►FamilySearch Digital Records: In 2018, FamilySearch continued their effort to make all microfilm images available in digital format for records on their FamilySearch.org site. Of the 63 missing Burgenland-area record sets at the start of the year, only 12 now remain to be made available as digital images. Our BB FamilySearch pages (at www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/LDS/LDS.htm) have been updated to document these additional films and provide links to the images.

►New 'Newsletter Notice' Mailing Software: For almost the whole existence of the BB, we had used the "Mailman" software (hosted by Rootsweb and lately supported by Ancestry.com) to send out our email-based newsletter. After we went to an online-only newsletter, the software issued the notice that the newsletter had been posted online. However, in recent years problems arose, knocking it offline too frequently for our comfort. Thus in January we reimplemented our mailing list on the TinyLetter platform (provided by the Rocket Science Group, makers of the MailChimp commercial emailing service). So far, so good!

►Church Record Transcriptions on the BB Site: During 2018 we were pleased to add BB Member Margaret Roosdahl's transcriptions of the available Catholic church records of Sankt Michael (1828-1895). The transcribed Catholic birth, marriage and death records of Sankt Michael (PustaSzentMihály) (1828-1895) are now available in sortable table format via the Vital Records Transcriptions link found on the BB home page. Thanks Margaret!

Further, we added links to the Online Digital Indexes for the Deutschkreutz and Stadtschlaining Jewish Communities. These are provided by the Austrian Jewish Museum (Österreichischen Jüdischen Museum, OJM) website. Credit goes to OJM director Johannes Reiss and his staff.

►Civil Recording Locations for Burgenland Villages: Several times this past year we updated our FamilySearch and Villages pages to correct errors (or add new information) concerning recording locations for church and civil vital records. Although we strive to be accurate, the Hungarians had a number of reorganizations of their recording locations in the pre-Austrian period, which has complicated our efforts.

►Hungarian Gazetteers: A new feature was added to the BB website in 2018, that being a page that provides links to pdf files of the 1877, 1888 and 1913 Gazetteers of the Hungarian Crown Lands, each titled "A Magyar [Szent] Korona Országainak Helységnévtára" in Hungarian. Our BB Gazetteer page also includes English-annotated copies of the 1888 key needed to interpret the abbreviations and symbols in the text plus a reconstructed and English-annotated 1913 key.

Further, it has links to the online 1877 Dvorzsák "Gazetteer of Hungary" ["Magyarország Helységnévtára"], which is hosted by Pécs University, and the 1851 Fényes "Geographical Dictionary of Hungary" ["Magyarország geográfiai szótára"], hosted online at the Ervin Szabó Library of Budapest.

To access the gazetteers, a link has been added to the BB homepage, as follows: Gazetteers: PDF files of Gazetteers (place names) of the Countries of the Hungarian Crown.

►Digital Microfilm Direct Access Project: During 2018, a project was undertaken to modify the links in our BB FamilySearch pages to take you directly to the start of the intended item on multi-item or by-type-arranged films (FamilySearch's catalog system does not do so). That project is complete.

►The Facebook Bunch: We added a new "regular" item to the BB Newsletter's "bits and pieces" section: that being, a monthly round-up of activities on the BB Facebook page. Vanessa Sandhu, a BB staff member and one of the moderators of our Facebook page, has kindly agreed to write this item; thanks Vanessa!

►"The Burgenländer Emigration to America" (by Dr. Walter Dujmovits): As expected following the outstanding 2014 first-year sales of 761 copies of the book, the sales rate slowed but with a still encouraging 197 copies purchased in 2015, 162 in 2016, 113 in 2017, and now 128 in 2018. Current total sales is 1361 copies.

As you may recall, the BB sells the book at its wholesale production cost of just $7.41 (plus any tax & shipping), as our goal is wide circulation rather than profit (we earn absolutely nothing from book sales but 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 remains pleased to have been instrumental in bringing this material to English-reading audiences and we recommend that you treat yourself to a copy, if you have not done so already... call it a late Christmas present for yourself!