Update on baby Lajos: his arrival at Ellis Island

With much surprise I read the comment that Donna Pointkouski of What's Past is Prologue had added to my previous post entitled Lajos long forgotten: an immigrant baby's story.

Donna had read the story of little Lajos and was intrigued as I was, wanting to determine the conclusion of the Tóth family's trip - so she did.

I was overwhelmed when I read her message, posted as a comment on my previous post. She wrote:

What a great post! Sad in a way, but nice to find that name and speak it once again. But, I hate mysteries... especially since I just named Steve Morse's site as my favorite for the COG. So, let me put you at ease. Little Lajos survived the trip and did NOT die at sea...you should be able to find his death record in Trenton. How do I know this? I found them. I'll email you the Ellis Island record. I tried Steve's site for the ship name, month/year, age 23-25, and a Hungarian Maria with no last name. Ellis Island has them indexed as Foth.

What joy to know that baby Lajos had made it across the Atlantic along with his family on the fifteen day trip from Hamburg, arriving on May 19, 1907. The ship manifest lists each family members' name, and even indicates their father's address in Trenton, New Jersey which was their final destination (although it is hard to read).

Now I can take the next step and look for the family in Trenton and hopefully someday visit little Lajos' grave.

Thank-you, Donna, for the best blog comment I've ever received. You made my day. Thanks for taking an interest in this "mystery" along with me. I appreciate and admire the way that you cleverly solved it so quickly!

Lajos long forgotten: an immigrant baby's story

"Lajos." (Pronounced lah-yos).

"Lajos."

The name is Hungarian for Louis.

I can't help but wonder when the name "Lajos" was last spoken by someone in my family.

I spoke the name "Lajos" with amazement when I found the May 4, 1907 ship passenger list that showed my Tóth family ancestors coming to America from Hungary via Hamburg and the ship U.S.S. Pennsylvania. The names of the Tóth family members traveling on the ship were listed as follows:
Maria, age 25 (my great-grandmother, actually age 23)

Maria, age 7 (her eldest daughter, actually age 6)

Ilona, age 3 (the second daughter, actually age 4 - whom I knew to be Aunt Helen: she had made some beautiful quilts that I remember fondly from my childhood, and I had recently visited with her daughter)

Pista, age 2 (little Stephen, not yet 2 1/2 years old - my grandfather, the last child known to have been born to the family while they lived in Hungary - he was mistakenly listed as female on this passenger list)

But listed below was another name: Lajos.

I had never heard anyone mention his name. A baby aged 6 months, the passenger list stated. He was an infant among the travelers on the trip to America. What had become of him?

Thanks to my local Family History Library, I had access to the civil birth records from the village of Gelej, Borsod County, Hungary where the family was from. I had recently searched for the records of each of the children of István & Maria (Németh) Tóth - from 1900 through 1904. I had found Maria Tóth, born November 3, 1900.

The next child was Ilona Tóth, born January 23, 1903.
It was a thrill to find my grandfather's name and date of birth, which was actually a few days different from the date we had always celebrated. Baby István Tóth, his father's namesake, was born on December 13, 1904.
I had stopped after finding my grandfather's record because I knew him to be last child born in Europe. That was a mistake on my part.

In a matter of days after finding Lajos' name on the passenger list of the U.S.S. Pennsylvania I was able to go back to the microfilms of the village registry and, sure enough, there was the name of baby Lajos: born December 2, 1906.

I spoke his name tenderly and my mind filled with questions. What must it have been like for my great-grandmother on that trip from Hungary to Germany and then on to the United States? She had traveled not only with three children, as I had thought, but without her husband and with a young baby. I had always been inspired by the thought of my great-grandmother Ilona Ujlaky's trip with her ill toddler who arrived at Ellis Island in 1909. Now, here was another great-grandmother whose trip posed even more of a challenge. How did she make it through such a difficult trial? And what had become of her baby, Lajos?

Last month I posted a twenty-five minute Ancestors episode about Ellis Island immigration here at 100 Years in America within my article entitled: The "isle of hope and tears" revisited. Along with other stories of Ellis Island and its immigrants, the video tells the touching story of a woman's discovery of her great-aunt's baby's name on the passenger list (who had been unknown to family members of the current generation) and her resulting search for the baby's final resting place.

I had watched the video with interest, touched by the story, with no idea that I would find myself in the same type of search for my unknown great-great-uncle: baby Lajos Tóth.

Did Lajos make it through the trip, or was he buried at sea? If he did make it to America, how long did he live, and where is he buried? In New York, where the family arrived, or in New Jersey where they first settled?

Unfortunately I cannot seem to find the family's arrival passenger list at Ellis Island. I have searched using various fields within Steve Morse's One-Step Ellis Island webpages, but still to no avail. But I will continue to do so. I feel compelled to learn the full story of baby Lajos and his short life.

In the meantime, I can't help but wonder when the name "Lajos" was last spoken in my family. Did his father, having arrived in America before his family, ever even see his young son? Did his siblings remember him years later as they spent their childhoods in America? Did his mother avoid mention of his name because of the painful memories that it brought to the surface for her?

"Lajos."

Born over one-hundred years ago, he lived such a short life, but he is a part of my family and its history forever.

Author's notes:
For the continuation of baby Lajos Tóth's story, see Update on baby Lajos: his arrival at Ellis Island.
I had originally written the post entitled A little boy, a big ship and a brand new world, also about this family's trip to America, with a few errors. Because of Stephen Tóth's naturalization records I had understood that he had arrived via the ship Amerika. I had made the assumption that his family had traveled with his father, and I was unaware at that time of the existence of baby Lajos. My discovery of the passenger list for the family's trip on the ship U.S.S. Pennsylvania of the Hamburg-Amerika line gave me more accurate information and I have corrected my original post to reflect this change.

Sources:

Hungary. Borsod. Gelej. Állami anyakönyvek, születtek [births], 1895-1908. Gelej (Borsod) Anyakönyvi Hivatal. FHL 2,227,088, item 5, pages 583, 628, 660, 704. Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc. 2006. Original data: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Bestand: 373-7 I, VIII (Auswanderungsamt I). Mikrofilmrollen K 1701 - K 2008, S 17363 - S 17383, 13116 - 13183.

A Hungarian-American coal mine disaster: December 1907

The one catastrophe that still rates as the single worst mining disaster in the history of America was the explosion of the Darr Mine southeast of Pittsburgh in December 1907. Two-hundred and thirty-nine men lost their lives that day, most of them Hungarian miners.

For more on the mining accident, see my article entitled Tragedy & miracles in the coal mines: December 1907 and follow the link to a video about the disaster, including an interview with Anne Toth, a descendant of one the victims who is working to preserve the memory of the fateful Darr Mine and its miners.

At this time I do not have any knowledge of coal miners on the Hungarian side of my family, yet many of their countrymen found their livelihoods in this dangerous occupation as new immigrants to America in the 19th and early-20th centuries.

Here, in their honor, is the Hungarian Miner's Anthem (Bányász himnusz):

Szerencse Fel! (Fortune's Up!)

Szerencse fel, szerencse le;
Ilyen a bányász élete.
Váratlan vész rohanja meg,
Mint bérctetot a fergeteg.

Nem kincs után sóvárgok én,
Bányász kislányt óhajtok én.
Bányász kislányt óhajt szívem,
Ki szívében bányász legyen.

És hogyha majd a föld ölében
végóránkat éljük,
Isten kezében életünk.
O megsegít reméljük!
Te kisleány ne bánkódjál,
Bányászként halni szép halál!

Egekbe szállani fel, fel Szerencse fel,
Szerencse fel, szerencse fel!

For more on the history of the Darr Mine and its disaster in 1907, see also the American Hungarian Federation's webpage on the Darr Mine Disaster Commemoration or Ray Washlaski's webpages on the Darr Mine at the Virtual Museum of Coal Mining in Western Pennsylvania website.

What's next? European genealogy & social networking

I was interested to read about the new developments in the world of online Hungarian genealogy, thanks to János Bogárdi's RadixLog post entitled Genealogy social networking site MyHeritage.com to hit Hungary and E-Europe. In addition to Hungarian, the site has now launched its Ukrainian, Czech and Polish versions.

János Bogárdi provides an interesting discussion on new developments in Hungarian family history for the web-savvy and what current changes might bring for the future of web-based European genealogy in general.

It is truly a great time to be alive and researching our European roots.

European genealogy resources online

Thanks to a link at the National Archives of Hungary website to this free online European record portal, I have been reminded of a few good sources for Croatian and Hungarian genealogy and history that I had forgotten about - and I have found a few new ones.

Below are websites that I'll be visiting in the near future. Check the portal for your European country of choice from A to Z (well, Albania to Yugoslavia anyway).

Croatia
Croatian Yellow Pages
Croatian White Pages
Adam Eterovich's Guide to Croatian Genealogy
Croatian National Library at Zagred in Croatian

Hungary
Hungarian directory - Magyar Telekom
Web archive of Hungarian genealogy in English
Hungary.hu in English
National Széchenyi Library in English

And one more...
The European Library

Nagyon köszönöm! The National Archives of Hungary in English

I recently mentioned the Croatian National Archives' (Hrvatski Drzavni Arhiv) new online records search: ARHiNET. It is a great resource for those researching Croatian family history, although I'm hoping for an English version of the site (or the ability to increase my speed at learning the Croatian language).

I also recently mentioned my decision to work further on the Tóth, Németh and Nagy families of what is now Hungary's Borsod-Abauj-Zempeln county and write about this side of my family here at 100 Years in America.

How happy I was to have found the National Archives of Hungary's website, their family research webpage, their online database/finding aids webpages, and the link to their e-Archivum electronic record system. The archives has kindly created this website in English -Thank-you! Nagyon köszönöm! - although most of the links require an understanding of Hungarian. (Including the website where you can create your own Hungarian family tree.) I think the Hungarian archives' Parish Registers search feature will be most helpful to me if I can just get past the Hungarian language prompts and understand what it is I am searching through.

My foreign language studies are certainly looking imminent. I'm so glad that I can take breaks and go back to the English records of my Irish ancestors of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ireland when I'm feeling really lost in Hungarian or Croatian. If only my great-grandmother and my grandparents had spoken to me in these languages more often throughout my childhood!

If only a church could tell stories

Legrad, Croatia's Holy Trinity Catholic church has seen many days in the lives of my ancestors. Marriages, baptisms, funerals, Masses... so very many since the day it was built around 1780.

If only its walls could speak.

Thankfully, the parish priests kept nice detailed records of the sacraments that occurred there. Thanks to those records I can get a glimpse into the lives of my family members.

Here is the church today - a beautiful sight in winter...

The Croatian National Tourist Board has this to say about the village of Legrad and its church:

Very attractive sights are the parish church and the park with columns - one of the most beautiful in northern Croatia.

The late Baroque one-nave parish church of the Holy Trinity with a harmoniously fitted belfry, rising from the main front, was built around 1780. The sanctuary features wall paintings (around 1793). The church has late Baroque-classicist altars, the pulpit (around 1798) and the "Holy Sepulchre". The park on the main square features a group of five columns from the 18th century with the central plague column of the Holy Trinity. Next to it is the column of St. Florian (1735).

What a beautiful place to sit and take a prayerful rest on a winter afternoon.

View earlier photographs of Legrad's Catholic church at two of my previous posts: Legrad's Catholic church and A happy day in 1905.

Images of Legrad taken in January 2008 and shared by a current resident. (Please contact the author for more information.)

Thanks to Donna's What's Past is Prologue post entitled If These Walls Could Speak: A German Häuserchronik which sparked the idea of a historic building sharing the stories of its lifetime.

Crossing borders and language barriers

I love the taste of the töltött káposzta, palacsinták and kifli recipes that have been handed down in my family.

I enjoy pouring over maps of the areas of Croatia and Hungary where my family originated, wondering if their villages look today like the pictures I have of them or the places I saw on my trip to what was then Yugoslavia years ago.

The peoples and cultures of Croatia and Hungary have a warm place in my heart - they are a part of me in many ways.

Oh, how I wish I could have inherited a natural proficiency for their languages along with my love of their culture!

I read with interest Jasia's Database Envy post at Creative Gene a few months ago. Though her troubles relate to the difficulty of reading Polish records, letters, documents and such, the story was all too familiar. Take out Polish, insert Croatian and Hungarian (and a little bit of Latin for church records) and you have the same difficulty in my family history search that Jasia has found: a genealogical language barrier.

It has been so exciting to receive new microfilms from the Family History Library at my local center with images of my ancestors' vital records from various Hungarian and Hungarian/Croatian villages. I've noticed often, however, that it takes me a lot longer to discover the significance of my finds than the others around me who are searching through English-language records, even though the Family History Library's Hungarian and Latin genealogical word lists have offered me much help.

Then there's the new digitization of records in Croatia. I had learned about the ARHiNET project of the State Archives in Zagreb several months ago and intended to write a post about it. I hesitated, planning to search the site for matične knjige (church records) of my family members and then write about my experiences. My problem: I couldn’t even get past the Croatian language log-in prompts.

Titula:
Ime:
Prezime:
Imatelj:

These fields threw me for a loop at first.

But it got worse...

Korisnicko ime:
Zaporka:
Potvrdi zaporku:
Kontrolno pitanje:
Kontrolni odgovor:

Kontrolno pitanje i kontrolni odgovor služe za ponovno dobijanje zaporke u slučaju da ste je zaboravili. Molimo upišite smisleno pitanje i odgovor.

At least I could read the field asking for:

E-mail:

Many of the others were words and phrases that I had not yet encountered. Not only had I not seen many of these words before, but some were not even in my handy-dandy Serbo-Croatian phrasebook. What a struggle it was to get through this gateway into the site itself. I could only imagine what difficulties would befall me once I entered.

Ivan Ćurković, my fellow Croatian genealogy blogger, thankfully does not share my struggles. A native Croatian speaker, he surely breezed through what I found to be a huge roadblock. At his blog, Curkovic.ca, he has written a nice explanatory article about the digitization of the Croatian archives. I appreciated his well-informed update about the project, and also several of his other recent posts about Croatian resources online, particularly his mention of the ImeHrvatsko.net website and a Vjesnik online article, both about the meanings of Croatian names. But there’s one problem: what is a great resource to Ivan is only a tease to me, since I am only at the word-by-word-phrase-by-phrase Croatian language translation level.

I am hopeful that slowly but surely I will gain more of an understanding of these languages that my forebears spoke daily. Thanks to helpful sites like Tomislav Kuzmic's EUdict.com Croatian-English Dictionary online, and Translation-Guide.com's online language translators, I may have a chance. Who knows, I may even be able to start reading whole books in Croatian!

Though finding the Croatian and Hungarian languages only a couple of generations back in my family can make the genealogical research process difficult, I do enjoy the challenge of learning these languages, and the feeling of camaraderie with my ancestors who spoke them well into the 20th-century.

If you're joining me on this quest to learn Hungarian and Croatian (maybe even a little Kajkavian), I wish you...

In Croatian: Sretno!
In Hungarian: Jó szerencse!
(Good luck!)

Back and forth across the Kingdom of Hungary

In addition to continued stories of the Ujlaki and related families from today's Međimurje region of Croatia (formerly Hungary's Zala County), 100 Years in America readers will find a new focus on another set of families and another area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Tóth, Németh and Nagy families from Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen County in northeastern Hungary became related by marriage to the Ujlaki family after their arrival in America a century ago. They came from the towns of Gelej, Keresztes (or Mezőkeresztes), and Korlat in the mountainous region of Hungary near what is today the border of Slovakia. I'm looking forward to digging further into this side of the family, thanks in part to the nice list of linked sites on János Bogárdi's Radix: a great online source for Hungarian genealogy.

Thanks to a mention of 100 Years in America on the Radix Log - Hungarian Genealogy News Blog, I was reminded of the myriad of good starting places at the Radix site, including a Hungarian place locator and index, and a Hungarian surname index. Radix Forum is an online discussion forum for communication with other Hungarian genealogy researchers. I had lots of fun at a new feature linked to the Radix site: the Topographical Postcards Index. It gave me a nice glimpse into various towns surrounding the areas where my ancestors lived.

If you have Hungarian ancestry and are looking to get started learning about your family's heritage, Radix is a great place to begin for help on a trip back to your Hungarian roots, no matter which side of the Kingdom of Hungary you may find them. I'm looking forward to traipsing back and forth across the land of St. Stephen in the continued search for my heritage. See you there!

A Valentine tribute to my ancestors

In honor of St. Valentine's Day today I thought I would remember some of the married couples in the Ujlaki and Toth family trees whose wedding dates I know (and some I don't).

Here's to all the loving couples in this extended family (several generations back). Without them there would be no family tree!

Stjepan & Magdalena (Bedenica) Bence

Josip & Terezija (Globlek) Ujlaki

Ferencz & Ilona (Bence) Ujlaki
Married February 15, 1905 in Legrad, Hungary's Catholic Church (now in Croatia)

Juro & Katarina (Bence) Simon

Istvan & Louisa (Bence) Vidakovic

Adam & Katarina Bence

Josef & Barbára (Nagy) Németh

István & Mária (Németh) Tóth
Married in Gelej or Korlat, Hungary

An Eastern European celebration in Pittsburgh

Well, it's not officially a celebration, but I'm sure there will be some celebrating during the course of the three-day FEEFHS (Federation of East European Family History Societies) conference in Pittsburgh this August 1-3, 2008. What a range of cultures will be represented!

The Federation of East European Family History Societies' website describes its mission as follows:

The Federation of East European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) was organized in 1992 as an umbrella organization that promotes family research in eastern and central Europe without any ethnic, religious, or social distinctions. It provides a forum for individuals and organizations focused on a single country or group of people to exchange information and be updated on developments in the field. While it primarily serves the interests of North Americans in tracing their lineages back to a European homeland, it welcomes members from all countries.

Jasia of Creative Gene has provided a nice overview of the coming conference along with details on hotels, registration, etc. The conference, organized by Lisa Alzo, will feature Steve Morse (of search engine fame) and Joseph Bielecki as keynote speakers. A host of other speakers will offer enlightenment on many topics related to Eastern European genealogy. Robert Jerin, well-known for his Croatian genealogy expertise, will give two talks: "Finding Your Grandma at Ellis Island” and “Searching for Your Croatian Roots”.

See the FEEFHS' official website for further details. If you're into Eastern European genealogy and/or history, this is the place to be in August!

To be the quiet little girl at the table once again

One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting in my grandmothers' kitchens watching all the activity and listening to all the discussion.

Oh, I loved running around with my cousins. We ran up and down the stairs, played hide and seek in the nooks and crannies of my grandparents' houses, went on tours of the garage and living room and bathrooms... But for some reason, my fondest memories are those times that I just sat and watched the kitchen at work.

Whether it was my grandfather sitting and reading the morning newspaper with his glasses on and his cup of coffee in hand, my aproned grandmother cooking a meal for our extended family, or my smiling aunts and great-aunts washing the dishes together while reminiscing in laughter about their childhood escapades, the memories of those kitchens from my child's point of view are the ones that stick with me the most.

I was usually all ears, sitting there quietly, although I answered questions politely, of course. (Maybe not so politely when my grandfather's offer of coffee to me - under age 10 - caused me to blurt out an emphatic, "No!") Though I very much enjoyed sitting and listening and taking in the sights and sounds of the kitchen, I now remember little about what was said during my moments of observation. A few phrases like, "Nothing is sacred anymore!" come to mind. A few memorable stories of aunts' childhood fiascos remain in my memory. But generally speaking, most of the talk of the kitchen probably went over my head.

How I would enjoy going back to those times and sitting again at those tables with the ears of a child and the understanding that I have now as an adult. What stories I could share, if only I could do so.

To R.S.V.P. to Jasia's invitation via the 41st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy to "take four ancestors to dinner", here is my dream:

• To once again travel back in time to be that little girl at the kitchen (and dining room) tables of my grandparents (with all the aunts and uncles and cousins there, and a few great-grandparents, too).
• To be able to bring not only the understanding I've gained with age, but the questions that I have now about their lives and their stories.
• To let them all know how much their personalities, lives and love have influenced me in my own life.

I know it is an opportunity that I can only find in my imagination. But, oh, how wonderful it would be to go back to being the quiet little observer at the table once again!

The love of fine cars: it's in the genes

It's not the kind of hereditary trait that I would ever be able to confirm with DNA testing. I've noticed for many years, however, that a love for fine automobiles runs in the Toth family.

Not to mention the many gems in more recent generations, Steve Toth was the owner of a number of humdingers. There was the 1956 convertible pink Cadillac that he bought used in 1957. His wife Mitzi surely enjoyed that car the most out of all of his vehicles, since she has always favored the color pink.

Back in 1943, when World War II was in full swing, Steve ordered a Fleetwood Cadillac. By the time his order was filled, four years had passed. He received his black Fleetwood Cadillac in 1947. (Here he is enjoying a "trunk-side view" from the Fleetwood with his young son Stephen.)

You may have read earlier about Steve's Reo Flying Cloud, the car that he owned during his courtship with Mitzi. They drove off to their honeymoon in style in that car in 1930.

My hunch that this love for fine cars was hereditary was confirmed one day a few years back when I found Steve's father's World War I draft card. István Tóth had arrived from Hungary only a decade or so earlier, and now used the name Steven Toth. Although I don't believe he served in World War I, along with every other male citizen of eligible age, he was required to report to the United States government and fill out the appropriate papers.

Steven's World War I draft registration (pictured below) indicates his occupation at the time. Only ten years after Henry Ford had begun producing his Model T, Steven Toth, according to the document, was working as "Repairer" in the "Boston & M. Car Shop" in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Another bit of circumstantial evidence or definitive proof? I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not this confirms the hereditary nature of this family's appreciation for fine automobiles.

In the meantime, Bill West is organizing a virtual genealogy parade over at West in New England. What better addition than a few fine cars to carry the dignitaries at the beginning of the parade? In honor of Steve Toth and his descendants, I'd like to submit the Reo Flying Cloud, 1947 black Fleetwood Cadillac and 1956 convertible pink Cadillac to the virtual parade.

Unfortunately, if they were attending, the Ujlaki family would probably have to walk alongside the parade. You see, Frank Ujlaki brought a car home to his family one day, more than likely sometime in the 1920's. In the process of introducing it to his wife and children, he somehow managed to plow into the fence with it. His wife Helen, concerned that the thing was too dangerous, made him take it back. He never owned another car again.

Frank did, however, work as a carpenter for many years. Part of the time he was a"wheelright" building wooden wheels. He also worked jobs buildling wagons and trucks out of timber. It took a lot of mathematical precision, talent and hard work to create the vehicles that he did. They would make very nice entries into any parade, I'm sure. But I don't think his wife Helen would let him drive them.

This post has been brought to you by Cadillac.

(Just kidding, but I thought you might enjoy seeing this 1956 ad for the pink Cadillac. It's not the convertible version, but it's some car, don't you think?)