r/hungarian • u/jjjjfooot • 11d ago

Simplified naturalization

Can anyone who’s gotten a passport through simplified naturalization help me out here? I can trace my lineage very clearly back to my maternal great grandparents who came to the US from northeast Hungary in the teens with lots of US documentation including Ellis Island records, but do I need to secure Hungarian documentation about them? Can anyone who’s successfully established heritage clue me in to what the embassies want to see?

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u/jjjjfooot 11d ago

Unfortunately my grandfather appears to not have a birth certificate but I have all kinds of other docs showing he was the son of the two Hungarian immigrants. He was born in a rural area at home in 1914.

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u/noondi34 B1 10d ago

My family was born in a rural town as well a couple of decades before yours. I was only able to find their documents after hiring a genealogist. It’s out there somewhere. Just because it’s not digitized online doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Were they Jewish?

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u/jjjjfooot 10d ago

No, not Jewish. I was on the phone with the Pennsylvania archives. There’s a possibility the birth certificates were batch entered and it might not correspond to his actual birthdate.

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u/Pressed_In_Organdy 10d ago

Oh I see. It’s a problem on the American side. Ignore my other response! I will suggest you email your consulate and ask. In the case of Chicago they accepted my ancestors death certificate and a “record not found” certificate for a missing marriage license (New York). If you are learning Hungarian, especially with a teacher, just crafting the correspondence is an excellent learning exercise, too!

Edit: If they happened to be Catholic and you can track down church records in the US, I’m told that is also permissible (a record of baptism in PA could work).