Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)
Nógrád Megyei Levéltár (Nógrád County Archives)
the nineteenth-twentieth centuries deserve mention. An important archival group is that of the Balassagyarmat Roman Catholic elementary school, reaching back to 1834. Among public corporation records the eighteenth-nineteenth century fragments of some Balassagyarmat guilds deserve mention. The records of the trade corporations of the county are very defective too. Of the associations we emphasize the records of the Nógrád National Institute between 1832 and 1843, interesting for the nationally biased, otherwise progressive activity of the association in general education. Otherwise the Archives has only association papers from the twentieth century. But among the archival collections one finds that of the association rules in the county, together with the association register begun in 1872. As to the records of economic organs we notice that the material of the largest industrial enterprises of the county, being firms of national interest, like the Salgótarján Coalmines Corp., Rimamurány-Salgótarján Iron Works Corp., Budapest-Salgótarján Machine Works and Iron Foundry Corp., etc. is preserved by the Hungarian National Archives, or Budapest Municipal Archives, respectively. More valuable economic archival groups in our Archives are: the records of the Salgótarján Directorate of the Salgótarján Coalmines Corp. (1868-1945), those of the Nógrád Coalmines (1946-1960), the collection of balance sheet reports (1950-1965), the Palóc Home Industry Cooperative at Szécsény (1952-1962). Among the ecclesiastical organs the material of the Szécsény Franciscan Convent between 1600 and 1943 is fragmentary, but significant; it illustrates the inner life and the economy of the order, besides it contains the collection of economic papers of various estates, formerly deposited with the archives of the convent. One finds the papers of the most important aristocratic landowning families (as the Balassa, the Zichy, the Forgách etc.) also in the Hungarian National Archives. Among the family papers preserved here there are some minor fragments and those of the Schrecker family, growing from leaseholders to landowners (1877-1949), illustrating the bourgeois way of life at the turn of the century. Personal papers contain the bequests of some county advocates and to the historian Iván NAGY. In the latter the manuscripts of his works, his unpublished studies, the copies of sicne destroyed archival materials and a sixteenth-nineteenth century collection of records from various family archives, gathered for his great genealogical work, deserve mention.
