The view from my corner of the world

I'm an American. I fly my American flag with pride. But in many ways I consider myself a citizen of the world.

On St. Patrick's Day the flag of Ireland is also waved proudly as you might have noticed if you visited Small-leaved Shamrock and A light that shines again.

The Hungarian and Croatian flags have a special place in my heart, too, as you may have guessed from reading 100 Years in America.

There are other countries that are also dear to me. I have a collection of international flags and dolls from all over the world (as I mentioned in my profile). My family and I have traveled overseas, and my children and I have visited many more places by proxy through the multi-continental business trips of my husband and the stories and items he has brought home on his return.

One of the countries that is most beloved to me in addition to my own is Switzerland, my home for part of my early childhood. My family moved to Switzerland at a time in my life when I was first able to be impacted by the foreign culture and language around me. I was just the right age to begin to compare the two worlds as I experienced the new one. I remember the beautiful late nights of Swiss summers, lying on the floor after a winter fondue, the enticing smells of the Zopf at the Migros, trips around town on the tram (take a ride via video below), elephant rides at the local zoo, and more.


Some of my most memorable experiences were during my time spent attending Swiss Kindergarten. Besides conversations with my good friend, an English-speaking girl whose family was British, my communication in school was conducted primarily in Schweizerdeutsch. I was just the right age to be a little language sponge and I learned fast. Soon I was teaching my parents new vocabulary at home.

During our stay in Switzerland, we were joined by what would eventually be considered a true member of the family: our red Volvo. The car carried our little family throughout Europe on many weekend trips and (thanks to my Dad's skillful driving) survived many a drive up steep, curving mountain roads sans guardrails.

When our family moved back to the United States, the Volvo returned with us via the Queen Elizabeth 2. The car remained a part of the family for many years. For this little daydreaming girl with fond memories of other homes and places, it acted as a constant in a changing world: a vehicle making the daily rounds in our new neighborhood, but keeping close the memories of our time in a "previous life".

The Volvo remained healthy long enough to be the very car in which I learned to drive as a teenager. Like a beloved pet, however, its days unfortunately had to come to an inevitable end. But its place in my heart has yet to be equaled by another vehicle and the memories that it evokes of my childhood remain.

Now, as an adult, I am aware of how my childhood formation in two different countries has shaped me. My results to the What American accent do you have? quiz were no surprise. The product of homes in several different geographical locations, I apparently have "no accent".

A few years ago I was struck by something that I read in Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon, a book about he and his fellow New Yorker wife's move to France with their young son:

It is, perhaps, a truth of expatriate children that rather than grow up with two civilizations, they grow up with less than one, unable somehow to plug in the civilization at home with the big one around. They grow up, we have noticed with other kids, achingly polite, and watchful and skilled, "adult," and guarded.

Me in a nutshell.

It seems that my experience of being a non-native speaker in a world of Swiss kindergartners has stayed with me. I am usually cautious with my words and often wondering about how the person at the other end of the conversation may be receiving them.

Growing up I sometimes felt different than most of my childhood peers in American classrooms who had never traveled out of "their own world". On the other hand, it was clear to me that I was certainly far from being Swiss. I had received the gift of living in the midst of both cultures, and they were a part of me, yet I didn't feel that I fit perfectly into either one.

The experience of living in the midst of a new language and culture during such a formative time of my life is one of the reasons that I value the study of our world and its many fascinating geographical regions, cultures, languages and histories, including that of my own family history.

I have tried to give my children this same appreciation and I am thankful that they seem to value the world and its variations as much as I do.

One of my children has qualified for the third time this year to compete at the state level of the National Geographic Bee. I am proud of her accomplishments and happy to see all of my children sharing my love for other cultures and peoples of the world.

The Hungarian-Croatian branch of my family that I have written about here at 100 Years in America has been in the United States for more than a century.

Personally, I've spent most of my life here.

Yet I have always lived with the knowledge that there is a great big world out there, and though it may sometimes seem so, America is not necessarily the center of it.

To all my friends and readers throughout the world: "Hello!" and "Grüezi!" to you from my corner of the earth to yours.

Sisterly love: the Ujlaky family in 1936

The Ujlaky girls were growing up, getting married and bringing grandchildren into the family starting in the late 1920's. These photos show Helen Ujlaky (formerly known as Ilona) posing with her four daughters and two granddaughters outside of she and her husband's South Beach home in Staten Island in 1936.


The one subject that I haven't yet identified is the fine automobile at the right in the photograph below.


Was it an Ford of the early 1930's as I suspect? If so, was it a car or could it actually be a truck since all we can view is the front end? I understand that Frank Ujlaky never owned a car himself (at least not for longer than a day). Was this the vehicle of one of his married daughters and her husband?

Identified or not, I enjoyed seeing the picture of this vehicle posing along with the Ujlaky girls back in the '30s.

For more vintage automobile photos and stories see The love of fine cars: it's in the genes and A ring, yellow roses & a Flying Cloud or visit the 45th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy whose theme is Cars as stars!

Take a trip back in time

Interested in taking a look at your ancestors' world from the viewpoint of historical maps? Take a look at Maproom.org. The site allows visitors to zoom into historical maps of the world, most scanned from atlases.

I found the 1880 Hungarian A Magyar Szent Korona Országainak Megyei Térképei by Hátsek Ignácz helpful. Its maps of Borsod and Zala counties gave me a good look at the areas where different branches of my family lived at the end of the 19th-century. The names of neighboring villages that I found may help me to track down vital records for family members who attended church outside their own towns.

If you exhaust Maproom.org's collection (which would not be easy to do) you'll want to visit their large list of links to other map sites online.

Enjoy your trip back into history!

Thanks to Julianna Smith's article at 24/7 Family History Circle for mentioning the 1880 Hungarian atlas online at Maproom.org.

First Croatian Catholic church in the U.S. may find new life as a museum

The home of the first ethnic Croatian parish in the United States, twice slated for demolition, has been given one more chance at remaining alive, possibly as a museum. The 108-year-old St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whose parish was merged with another area church in 2004, will probably not see a future as a diocesan building. Instead, the Church may sell the property to the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance, who has an interest in preserving it for historic reasons.

For more information on St. Nicholas, see the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's March 25, 2008 article entitled Vacant North Side church may find new life. A 2007 article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette regarding the removal of religious objects from the church is also of interest and includes a photo of the church.

Updates from the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation which was "established to save and preserve the beautiful St. Nicholas Croatian Roman Catholic Church" can be viewed at their website.

Hungarian Easter Monday weather: showers!

Easter Monday in Hungary means one thing to young girls and women of marriageable age: watch out for showers!

This is the day when Hungarian young men carry out the tradition of the "Easter sprinkling".

Here's how the events of the day have usually passed for unmarried women and girls, according to Anikó Gergely's Culinaria Hungary:

They wear pretty clothes and await the unannounced arrival of their admirers. Girls take a pride in attracting many visitors and "waterers". After the boy has carried out his ritual role, he is offered gaily painted eggs, home-baked cookies, and an alcoholic drink [if he is of the appropriate age]. He is then free to go on to the next girl. The sprinkling with water and the gift of Easter eggs is a pre-Christian fertility symbol far older than the celebration of Easter.

Often the boys and young men were expected to recite a "sprinkling poem" before showering the girls with water. Some examples of these poems can be found on the Hungarian Heritage Museum webpage about Easter Sprinkling.

Rooted in old Hungarian country tradition, this custom is not as prevalent today as it once was, but it still can be found in Hungary. Today, however, instead of the bucket of water, girls often find themselves sprayed with a few splashes of perfume.

In my opinion, that's quite an improvement on this age-old beloved Hungarian tradition.

Happy Easter from Croatia

An Easter gift for you and me: photos of Legrad's beautiful Catholic Church decorated for the most important holy-day of the year!





Thanks very much to a current parishioner and reader of 100 Years in America for taking and sharing these pictures. What a glorious place to visit after this Holy Week (Veliki tjedan) of reflection and preparation!

Sretan Vam Uskrs!

A holy Easter to you!

Doing your Easter baking?

As you do your baking on this Holy Saturday (or enjoy the scents from the kitchen) I thought you might be interested in a few recipes for Easter breads from different cultures. Enjoy!

Croatian Easter Bread (Paška)
1 cake or package yeast

2 cups lukewarm milk
9 cups flour
1 cup butter, soft
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon salt

Crumble yeast into bowl. Add 1 cup milk and 1 cup flour.

Mix and set aside to rise in warm place.

Cream butter; add sugar and eggs and mix well.

Add remaining milk. Knead until dough is smooth and elastic.

Set aside in warm place until double in bulk. Form into desired shapes.
Allow dough to rise in double buld in pans;

bake at 350 F for 30 to 35 minutes.

Halfway through baking, brush top with beaten egg yolk to which
a little milk has been added.
Tip: If you melt 1 stick butter and knead into dough

it will keep paška soft.

From "Our Favorite Recipes" St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church,

Los Angeles, California compiled by Karen Mintzias.

Hungarian Easter Loaf

1 sugar cube

3 cups (700 ml) milk

1 3/4 cakes (30 g) compressed yeast

8 1/2 cups (1 kg) flour

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon salt

Scant 1 cup (100 g) confectioners' sugar

Generous 1/2 cup (140 g) butter

1 egg for glazing

Dissolve the sugar cube in scant 1/2 cup (100 ml) lukewarm milk.

Crumble into the milk the yeast and leave for about 10 minutes in a warm place.

Sift the flour, and combine with the egg yolk, salt and yeast mixture.

Add the confectioners' sugar, half the butter, and the remaining milk, slightly warmed.

Knead to a smooth dough, using the dough hook of a mixer.

When the dough begins to come away from the sides of the bowl, add

the remaining softened butter, a teaspoonful at a time.

Knead in firmly. Sprinkle with flour, then cover with a

kitchen cloth and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled

in size (about 30 minutes).

Divide the dough into three equal portions,

and shape each into a long roll on a floured working surface.

Braid them together. Place on greased baking tray to

prove again and double in size.

Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C).

Brush the loaf with beaten egg, and bake for 45-50 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before slicing.

From Anikó Gergely's Culinaria Hungary.

A blessed Good Friday

Artwork entitled Crowning by Thorns (detail) c. 1490, altarpiece tempera on wood by unknown artist, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest.

Hungarian Catholics to welcome Auxiliary Bishop in New Jersey

The Hungarian Catholic Bishop's Conference (Magyar Katolikus Püspöki Konferencia Titkársága) has appointed a man to shepherd the flock of Hungarian Catholics living abroad.

If you are one of those sheep and live in the Mid-Atlantic area, you might be interested in attending a special Mass celebrated by newly-appointed Auxiliary Bishop Dr. Ferenc Cserháti.

Join Saint Ladislaus Catholic Church of New Brunswick, New Jersey in welcoming their new Bishop on Sunday, April 6 at 6:00 p.m. For more information view this announcement of the event.

Easter traditions: Decorating eggs and... fighting!

After the long forty-day Lenten season (or short as it seemed to me this year) we are on the threshold of the Easter celebration: the most glorious of all days for the Church. As you make your holiday preparations, I'm sure that you are planning to decorate Easter eggs in some way. Why not try your hand at dyeing eggs in the style of the Hungarian, Croatian and other Eastern European cultures?

The tradition of decorating Easter eggs goes back over a thousand years. For centuries eggs were colored red, representing the blood of Christ. Only about three-hundred years ago were other colors introduced. They often featured ancient symbols (and still do today). The Hungarian eggs, called hímestojás, can have geometric designs or decorations showing a resemblance to the embroidery that Hungary is known for.

Croatian Easter eggs, called pisanice (meaning "to write") are often decorated with a white star in southern Croatia and with flowers, pines and various geometric shapes in other parts of the country. The eggs were traditionally colored with natural dyes from vegetables like onions and beets.

Want to try your hand at these beautifully decorated eggs this Easter? Probably the most popular method is to use hot liquid wax. Pencil-like instruments or small knives are used to reveal decorations by removing the wax after coloring. To get a nice shine on your eggs, you can use oil to polish them. What a beautiful basket of eggs you can have for Easter, give or take one or two duds when you first start out.

No success with any of your attempts at decorating Easter eggs the traditional way? You might like one Croatian Easter egg tradition that would allow you to dispose of your egg decorating failures. Croatians dispense with Easter egg hunts and instead have an egg fight! Called kockanje or tucanje (tuca), this simple game involves holding a hard-boiled egg in your hand and trying to hit the top of everyone else's egg with your own without breaking yours. The winner is the one with the intact egg at the end.

Photo of Hungarian hímestojás by Emese Kerkay and published in the American Hungarian Museum Publication, Passaic, NJ and online at the Hungarian Heritage Museum website.

For more information on Hungarian Easter customs, see Culinaria Hungary.

The Best of Croatian Cooking has a page on Croatian Easter celebrations and includes many appropriate recipes for the season.

Doing family history research in New Jersey?

Just when I was about to begin looking into the Tóth family who arrived in Trenton from Hungary a century ago, I have learned that New Jersey's vital records access may soon be limited.

Over concerns about identity fraud, the state is considering restricting access to records that have been available to the public for decades. The end result may mean that birth records would not be accessible for 100 years or more if the person is still living, death records 40 years after the death, and marriage records for 50 years.

For more information about the campaign by New Jersey lawmakers to restrict access to these records, see the article in the Courier Post Online entitled Bill would restrict access to records.

Ironically, the result of such a restriction would probably not have much impact on thieves seeking identities to steal, but would certainly cause much frustration for genealogists and historians.

Thanks to Megan of Roots Television for a heads-up about this New Jersey bill in her post entitled Not Again! Potential Records Restriction in NJ.

For more information on similar concerns regarding Pennsylvania records, see my post entitled Doing Pennsylvania Genealogy? at Small-leaved Shamrock.

Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!

I can't resist wishing you a Happy St. Patrick's Day over here at 100 Years in America.

Wondering where I've been spending my time recently? Take a visit or two over to this week's posts at Small-leaved Shamrock and A light that shines again for a clue. For a special treat, take some time to browse through the St. Patrick's Day parade in the 4th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture!

After this busy couple of weeks celebrating Irish heritage (during which I've been all but ignoring my Hungarian and Croatian roots), I hope to be back to our "regularly-scheduled programming" here at 100 Years in America.

In the meantime, don't forget to wear your green!

On babies and trans-Atlantic crossings

It was just a few short years ago that my husband and I took a very memorable trip to Europe. We traveled accompanied by our children, including the newest addition to the family: our baby daughter just shy of five months old.

The trip was challenging in many ways. Long plane flights, long walks, luggage-toting, frequent adjustments to new sleeping arrangements in hotels and guest houses...

The trip was not for the faint-hearted. Each child was tasked with toting their own suitcase and/or carrying a backpack, etc. I carried my baby almost continuously for two straight weeks. Time strapped into her car seat was very limited (only a couple of taxi rides and one rental car trip required it). We traveled almost exclusively by train through France, Switzerland and Germany, baby in my arms. We didn't even consider taking a stroller. It was hard enough to get on and off the Paris metro with a baby and her siblings not to mention a bulky stroller!

Our littlest one loved the trip. She constantly had new things to look at. It was the dream vacation for a baby who has not yet had the inclination to crawl.

Some friends with similar-aged children thought we were crazy to attempt such an adventure. One, whose baby was the same age as ours, said, "I can barely make it to the grocery store. How did you make that trip to Europe?"

During some of the more difficult moments of our trip, when things seemed momentarily overwhelming for this traveling mother and her young family, I found inspiration in the memory of my great-grandmother's journey from Europe with her toddler to meet her husband in America, who had left several years before. Ilona (Bence) Ujlaki, known to me as Grammy Ulaky, had faced her trip alone with her young son. His illness and his resultant stay at Ellis Island had to be a trial extraordinaire for a young mother, only age 24. Surely, if she could make it through that ordeal, I could make it through my journey. I pressed on knowing that my struggles were not half as difficult as hers.

Now, several years later, I have additional inspiration in the perseverance of motherhood: my great-grandmother Maria (Németh) Tóth. Like Ilona, Maria had crossed the Atlantic alone on her way to join her husband in a new country. She, however, had three young children with her - plus a baby!

You may have read the post about my discovery of baby Lajos' name on the U.S.S. Pennsylvania passenger list originating in Hamburg and then again on the list at Ellis Island. I was amazed to find the name of a family member who I had never heard existed. After further contemplation, I am even more amazed at the fact that this poor mother, my great-grandmother, survived such a trip with her young children and baby and made it to America with her sanity intact.

Imagine this: one adult with four young children ages six, four, two and five months. No disposable diapers. Not even a toilet, for goodness sake. No bag full of extra cookies, snacks and juice boxes. Probably not even decent meals or clean water, if enough water was even available. Fifteen straight days in the steerage section of a ship after a cross-continent trip by train from Hungary to Germany.

Ughhhh.

Don't forget to consider the fact that along the way Maria faced difficulty in communicating with fellow passengers, train and ship employees, and workers at the ports of Hamburg and Ellis Island. I wonder how many Hungarian speakers she actually encountered along the way. It must have been a relief to speak with someone in her native tongue.

I know from traveling with young children that no trip is easy. But what I know about the journey of my great-grandmother Maria (Németh) Tóth is almost unthinkable to me as a mother. In pondering the struggles that she must have faced on her journey to America, I can only hope that somehow she received special grace from God during her trial and met a few kind and helpful strangers on her way.

I never had a chance to meet my great-grandmother, known to her family as Grammy Toth. If I could do so today I would thank her as a great-granddaughter and a fellow mother: with thanksgiving for her perseverance during what was possibly one of the greatest trials of her life. Her courage and sacrifice made it possible for our family to begin a new life in America.

Legacy of courage: a tribute to the women that came before us

On the walls of my dining room I have hung photographs of family members. Most of them are in black and white or sepia, and some were taken many years ago - even many decades before I was born.

Surrounding the table where our family gathers today for special meals are the faces of those that have gone before us, and whose memory I hope to keep alive in the minds of myself and my children. The youngest generation may not have ever known these family members who lived so many years before, but their presence is here with us via their photographs and the stories of their lives that we remember together.

I am often especially inspired by the photographs of several of the mothers present in my dining room "gallery" - mothers of various times and generations. As a mother myself, I have moments when the struggle to perseverere in patience can be challenging. I have often found encouragement to continue after a short visit to the photographs of those women that have come before me, a few minutes to ponder the struggles that they faced in their own lives, and a prayer to God to share their strength and courage.

In this month of March, designated as Women's History Month, 100 Years in America honors the memories of those women whose dedication to their homes and families, often in the midst of great struggle and suffering, have contributed so much to who we are today.

To our mothers of all generations, past and present: a heartfelt, "Thank-you". Though many of your lives have passed, your legacy lives on, and the memory of your courage and love inspires us in our own lives today.

1938: "Children, say cheese!"

Ujlaky grandchildren (and friends?), about 1938

I have identified only a few of the children in this photograph. Anyone recognize any of these sweet faces?

A Wordless Wednesday entry (such as this one) is a picture that speaks for itself without a lot of description. The picture may be one whose subjects are not yet identified or whose story is not fully understood. If you have any information about the subjects, date or location pertaining to the above photograph, please post a comment or send an email and share what you know.