Jósa Miklós - Ulrich Attila: A németszőgyéni és bánházi Jósa család története (Régi magyar családok 3. Debrecen, 2005)
Summary
Summary Miklós Josa - Attila Ulrich: The History of the Josa Family of Németszögyén and Bánháza It was in the last decade of the 19th century that Jenő Jósa de Németszögyén et Bánháza started collecting memorabilia of his family, and began to conduct a systematic genealogical research in order to write the history of his family's lineage. His early death prevented him from seeing it through, however he passed the project onto his son György in his will. György Jósa de Németszögyén had done a thorough research and spent twenty five years, and most of his earnings in his quest to fulfill his father's wish before he deposited a unique collection of precious artifacts, heirlooms and documents of some four thousand pieces in the Hungarian National Archive in 1934 for posterity. It is György Jósa de Németszögyén who can get credit for the collection and drawing up the family tree all the way back to the first Jósa being donated armorial bearings and granted nobility in 1583 by king Rudolf II. To the greatest misfortune and sorrow of the family, the entire collection including the original ,,armalis" letter issued by Rudold II. was destroyed by a devastating fire caused by allied bombings that hit the Hungarian National Archive in 1945. Only one certified registry book listing all items in the family archive survived the war. As a result, when we set our goal to write the history of the family, a brand new methodical research had to be started, practically from scratch. What futher hindered our work was the fact that many of the estates and properties that used to belong to or were the habitats of the Jósa clan lie outside of present day Hungary, in neighboring Slovakia and Rumania. We the authors began to work together after having met by chance in the Jósa András Museum on February 12, 1998. During the past seven years we have worked in a great number of county and city archives of Hungary in search for clues. Plethora of
