A Pest Megyei Levéltár. Levéltárismertető (Budapest, 2004)
Brief history of the Pest County Archives
he very first evidence of development of an archive in our county was in the middle of the 17 th century. It is indisputable, that the documents, reports considered important had been kept in previous centuries also, but they were usually handled together with the family documents of the Lord Lieutenant or the Vice-Lieutenant, this way they were not guaranteed to endure, to be preserved constantly and permanently for the county's interest. Our first data regarding the separation of private and public related documents in Pest-Pilis-Solt County dates back to 1657. The forming and developing archive suffered a severe damage on June 5, 1682: the county town and also the archive storing Castle of Fülek was besieged and most documents were destroyed by fire. Only the reports and documents originating after 1638 could be saved and kept, with some losses, up to these days. Only a few documents can be found in the archive from earlier years. Following the expulsion of the Lurks, the safe keeping and handling of documents had a distinguished role in the county town, Pest. The county had its old documents already organized prior to the central order, in 1717. Data -. Nv can be uninterruptedly found in reports from the 18 th ] century concerning the management of the archives, and regular usage of documents. In 1769 it was proudly reported to the Resident Council that the County Archives is well organized and accurate, and both the older and current documents arc catalogued, having their own indexes. Descriptions and instructions of Joseph II were carried out among the first ones in Pest-Pilis-Solt County for the sake of the archive organization and protection. Gábor Balla regestrator was entrusted in a resolution, as the second in the country, in November 29, 1785 to manage the county's archives full time from that date. Gábor Balla was well known country wide for his organizing and aid-creating job. The management of the county wrote about the "Letter Store-House of our County" as "the major treasure ol our county" in 1811. It is typical that the county being proud of its archive had located it in the place considered 1S3 Iratcsomó fedőlapja (19. SZ-) Deckblau von Aktenbund (19. Jh.) Cover page of file (19 ,h c.)
