Although religious authorities were required to maintain registers of births, marriages, and deaths starting around 1790 in Austro-Hungary and around 1830 in Walachia and Moldavia, records before 1850 are scarce. Civil (government) registration of vital events began throughout Romania in 1865, but not until 1895 in Austro-Hungary. Various kinds of censuses were conducted from the 18th century onward, and many of these records have been preserved. A census could be limited to a particular county or city; it might count only the Jews, or only property owners, or the entire population; and it was most often conducted for taxation purposes.
The two main sources for records are the Family History Library (FHL) of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) (see below) and archives in Romania. The Romanian National Archive provides an index of counties (Servicii judeţene) and general contact information for archive services.
Even though the FHL has not been directly allowed to microfilm records in Romania, there are some Jewish vital records available from different sources. However, most genealogical research must be done on site in Romania. Microfilmed vital records: Arad County (town of Apateu), Bihor (records from several towns), Bukovina (also records from several towns) Causani-Noui, Moldova (records from both the presently independent Republic of Moldova and from the Moldova county in Romania). There is an online collection of Moldova Poll Tax Census (Revision Lists) and Census Lists consisting of family lists for the tax-paying population (about 95% of the population) conducted from 1796-1859 and a variety of family, resident, population, colonist, and ethnic group lists from 1818-1917. The records are in Russian and Moldovan (virtually the same as Romanian), and there are often, but not always, indexes at the beginning of each volume. The FHL also has a microfilmed collection for Bessarabia, with a description, mostly in Russian, of public records consisting of personnel service records from various governmental and school departments, lists of residents and social classes, family lists, lists of Jewish population, extracts from all-national census, and correspondence. Some films of census records are also available for areas that were previously under Hungarian rule (see our research guide on Hungary).
If you want to find microfilm records at FHL: go to the online FamilySearch Catalog and do a “Place Search” first using the town name, and then using the province (judet) name. If you know the film you need, you can search the list of microfilms on long term loan at the Ackman & Ziff Genealogy Institute to view it there.
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