Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)

Bács-Kiskun Megyei Levéltár (Bács-Kiskun County Archives)

BÁCS-KISKUN MEGYEI LEVÉLTÁR (BÁCS-KISKUN COUNTY ARCHIVES) 6001 KECSKEMÉT, Kossuth tér 1. (Pf. 77.) Tel. 12-686 Director: Tibor IYÁNYOSI SZABÓ There is a section of the Archives at 6100 Kiskunfélegyháza, Petőfi tér 2. Its collecting interest covers the city Kiskunfélegyháza and the Kiskunhalas district. The archival material of the cities Kiskunfélegyháza and Kiskunhalas is preserved here. The county Bács-Kiskun has been established in 1950 from the southern part of the former Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun county and three districts of the former Bács-Bodrog county belonging to Hungary. In consequence BácsKiskun County Archives lacks any significant material from the feudal and the capitalist periods. The records of the enumerated counties are preserved in Pest County Archives and in Sremski Karlovci (Yougoslavia). Up to 1876 there existed a separate administrative unit, the Jazygo-Comanian district; its archival material is found partly in Bács-Kiskun, partly in Szolnok County Archives. The repository preserves 7100 running metres. Our oldest record is a charter dated 6 October 1334; this included, we guard 23 records before Mohács. The feudal and capitalistic material comes mainly from the cities Kecskemét, Baja and Kiskunfélegyháza. At present the county embraces 6 cities and 106 villages. In the archives of Kecskemét city there are very fragmentary seventeenth century records, but the material is continuous from the early eighteenth century. It was famous as early as in the age of Turkish occupation, but its majority was burnt in the Rascian onslaught in 1707. In 1944 another heavy damage befell the city records, as the archival and museal material, placed in some farms for security reasons, was destroyed during the fighting. The destruction touched the original copies of the journals of the council and of the assembly (except one volume), the so-called "closed archives", guild records, press material and the duplicates of church registers. In spite of the heavy losses the feudal material of the city has a great significance, due to the fact that it is practically the only source of the seventeenth-eighteenth century history of the "Sand Ridge".