Surname surprise: "Captcha" in the family tree

I was writing a comment on someone else's blog and thanking them for reading and commenting here at 100 Years in America. I completed my comment and was surprised to find one of the family surnames that I research popping up as the "captcha" word:
I did a double take. How had this little bit of magic happened?

I'll be on the lookout for my other 100 Years in America surnames in "captcha" mode. I'm not sure I'll be seeing Kerekgyártó anytime soon, but how about Bedenica, Bencze, Globlek, Nagy, Németh or Ujlaki?

The view from my corner of the world

As a final tribute to Geography Awareness Week, I've reposted this article: a look at my personal "view of the world". It originally appeared here at 100 Years in America on March 30, 2008. It is also one of my favorite contributions to the Carnival of Genealogy, whose participants (including myself) have been reminiscing this week.

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.

Međimurje: Meeting place of rivers and cultures

This article originally appeared here at 100 Years in America on April 27, 2008. I've reposted it here in honor of Geography Awareness Week. It is also one of my favorite contributions to the Carnival of Genealogy, whose participants (including myself) have been reminiscing this week.

The land of Croatia is a crossroads. It has been since recorded history and will probably always remain so. Just look at its profile on a map: the crescent-shaped country looks as if it had been pressed at the center and pushed toward western Europe and up against the Mediterranean Sea. It has survived, packed densely with the strength and resilience of its people.

Perhaps one of the places in modern-day Croatia that has most played a role in history as a crossroads is the area from which my family emigrated. It is today's Međimurje county (Međimurska županija), an area within the Drava River basin in Croatia. Situated on the northernmost edge of Croatia, Međimurje county currently shares borders with both Slovenia and Hungary and is also very close to Austria. Its western border meets the foothills of the Alps while its eastern edge touches the Pannonian plains.

Over the centuries the area has been ruled by various different nation-states, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary (it was formerly part of Hungary's Zala county), and of course most recently, Yugoslavia. The music, cuisine and even the language of the area is rich with cultural influences from its neighbors, predominantly Hungary. Vinko Žganec, a contemporary of the well-known Bela Bartok, spent much of his life collecting and recording Croatian folk songs, including over 15,000 from the Međimurje area itself.

The crossroads of Međimurje has seen many travelers pass through, including Evliya Çelebi, the famous Ottoman traveler of the 17th century who mentioned the area in his books.

My great-grandparents Ferencz & Ilona (Bence) Ujlaki and their families were residents of the villages of Legrad and Donja Dubrava on the Eastern edge of today's Međimurje county. Today Donja Dubrava (once known as Alsódomboru) still lies in the county. Legrad was also once part of the county, but was "pushed" out to neighboring Koprivničko-križevačka county (Koprivničko-križevačka županija). The reason has an interesting story behind it.

The name Međimurje, taken from the words međi (between) and mor(j)e (sea), means "between the seas". The area is located at the confluence of the Drava and the Mura Rivers, thus it was named Međimurje.

The villages of Donja Dubrava and Legrad are very close to the actual confluence of the two rivers. On the map below you can view Donja Dubrava on the left and Legrad a little further to its southeast, across the Drava. (The Mura, not shown on the segment of the map below, lies just to the northeast.)


According to Ivan Ivan Vecenaj-Tišlarov in his book To My Homeland, "The Drava has never been timid and humble... The history of continuous changes in the Drava River course are both interesting and tragic. It has most affected the inhabitants of Legrad."

Legrad was once situated on the same side of the Drava as Donja Dubrava, but in 1710 the river changed its course after a flood and placed the village of Legrad to its south instead of its north. Since the river was considered the border, the county's border moved and as a result Legrad's legislative affiliation was changed because of natural causes. It is interesting to wonder what the residents of the time thought about the displacement of the town through this type of "divine geographic intervention".

The history of this part of the greater Podravina (Drava River basin) region in Croatia goes back to the Neolithic period (early Stone Age). Legrad itself is known for the 7th to 8th-century B.C. Thracian-Cimmerian archaeological discoveries. The Croats settled in the area shortly after the Romans: in the 7th century. Some of the first preserved written documents refering to the area where these two small villages now lie were written during the Middle Ages in 1232 about the Vizmic estate (Bistrica parish). The village of Donja Dubrava was first recorded by name in the year 1446 (as Uj Dombo).
The area was protected during the time of the Turkish invasions by the noblemen of the Croatian Zrinski family. Their success prevented the area from ever being conquered by the Turks, although surrounding areas succumbed during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Zrinski family castle and fortress, named Utvrda Novi Zrin, was a formidable sight in the 17th century to would-be invaders.


Lucic (or Lucius) and Blaeu's inclusion of the Map of Illyria below in the Atlas Maior of 1667 was dedicated to Croatian ban (viceroy or ruler) Petar Zrinski. The dedication begins as follows:

To the most illustrious and noble lord, Prince Peter of Zrin, the ban of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, hereditary ban of the Littoral, hereditary captain of the Legrad fortress and Medimurje peninsula...

Legrad and its neighbor Donja Dubrava (Alsódomboru) went on to continue as an important urban market area for many centuries, with industry centered on traditional craft-making, milling, lumbering, grain farming, livestock breeding, sieving for gold, fishing, and boat and raft trade. (You can see some of the beautiful traditional basket-weaving techniques from the local area still practiced today at Gondola.hr. (These baskets can be purchased in the United States through Hubert Company.)

By the time of the births of my great-grandparents in the late 19th-century, both villages had lost somewhat of their importance as a centerpoint for trade in the area, and had settled into a more quiet existence. The early 20th-century saw a period of high emigration and both villages remain small towns today. Donja Dubrava reached its peak population in 1910 with almost 3,500 people, and today has roughly 2,300 residents. Legrad today has about 2,700 residents.

Thanks to a current resident of Legrad I have some beautiful 2008 photos to share along with my own historical photos of the home village of my great-grandparents.
Legrad's Holy Trinity Catholic Church (Župa Presvetog Trojstva) was built around 1780 - a beautiful late-Baroque one-nave parish church. In the year 1790, Donja Dubrava received its own parish church - St. Margaret (Župa sv. Margarete dj. mč.) - after branching off from the old Bistrica parish in Donji Vidovec (Župa sv. Vida mč.). Unfortunately, Legrad's church suffered damage during World War II, but still stands and remains beautiful today.


Donja Dubrava is home to several statues dated 1757, including images of the Holy Trinity and St. Mary, athough I have no photos of these to share with you at this time. The park in Legrad's center square has been graced since the early 18th-century by a group of five columns, including one dedicated to the Holy Trinity and one to St. Florian, shown below.


I'm not sure about the date of origin of Legrad's school building, but I do know that my great-grandmother attended school there as a child in the 1890s. Below are two pictures of Legrad's school, taken about a century apart.
I hope you enjoyed this short history of Legrad, Donja Dubrava and the Medimurje region of Croatia. I'll leave you with a few images of the train station from which my great-grandparents left their home village for America and of the beautiful Drava River, source of sustenance, trial and inspiration to the Croatian people for centuries.


Author's notes:
This article is based on research that I have done about the history of the Međimurje area over a number of years. In addition to the links included within it, the information in this article was based on (but not limited to) the following sources. If you have any corrections or helpful additions to Međimurje: Meeting place of rivers and cultures, please contact me.

Sources of images:

• 2008 photos of Legrad from resident photographer (contact the author for more information)
• Historical photographs in possession of the author
• Images of Peter Zrinski and Legrad's fortress from Hrvatski Povijensni Portal's Utvrda Novi Zin webpage
• Map of counties of Croatia from Wikipedia's Međimurje County webpage
• Map of Croatia's northernmost counties, including confluence of the Drava & Mura Rivers from Avijacija Bez Granica
• Map of Illyria 1666 from Croatian History's Coat of Arms webpage

Other sources:

• Croatian National Tourist Board's Legrad webpage
• Croatian National Tourist Board's Prelog webpage
• EKO Legrad's Povijest Legrada (in Croatian)
• Ethnographic Museum Zagreb website
• Hrvatska Elektroprivreda's Novo Virje Hydroelectric Power Plant Environmental Impact Study
• Općine i Župe Donja Dubrava (The Municipality of the Parish of Donja Dubrava) by Zvonimir Bartolić, Dragutin Feletar, Petar Feletar, Vladimir Horvat, Ladislav Kranjec, Hrvoje Petrić, published by Meridijani, 2007. (English introduction)
• Triplex Confinium's Drava Valley Multiple Borderlands
• Wikipedia's Koprivnica-Križevci County webpage
• Wikipedia's Međimurje County webpage

This article was written for the 47th editon of the Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia of Creative Gene. The topic, "A Place Called Home", focuses on the hometowns of our ancestors. Stop by for some other looks at the significant places in the stories of family historians like myself.

"The waves' rippling song": South Beach, Staten Island

This article originally appeared here at 100 Years in America on June 1, 2008. I've reposted it here in honor of Geography Awareness Week. It is also one of my favorite contributions to the Carnival of Genealogy, whose participants (including myself) have been reminiscing this week.

The move to Staten Island's South Beach in 1921 must have felt a little bit like going home to Frank and Helen Ujlaky. Emigrating from Hungary more than twelve years earlier, they had settled in the Hungarian district of Manhattan, a bustling, busy, crowded part of the city. It was a far cry from their rural home village of Legrad, where the Drava and Mura Rivers flowed past family farms and vineyards.

In 1921, Frank resettled his family across the bay to Staten Island's South Beach. (On the 1941 map below, you can find South Beach just under the easternmost point of Staten Island.)

Frank built his family's new home on Nugent Avenue, putting up the frame and doing much of the work himself.

The house still stands today.

At the time of their move to South Beach in 1921, the children of the Ujlaky family included five siblings. The youngest, a baby brother, would be born into the family later that year. Kas was the first of Helen's children to be born in a hospital. (Helen told her grown daughters years later that she much prefered birthing her babies at home.)

After the family's move to South Beach, Frank's work continued in Manhattan. For many years his long work days included ferry rides across the bay and then an additional part of the commute to Upper Manhattan. According to one of his daughters he once fell asleep on his way home after a long day's work and missed his opportunity to get off the ferry!

Life on Staten Island was good for the Ujlaky family in the decade prior to the Great Depression. They had a new home, Frank had steady work, and the children were growing up. Before the move from Manhattan, Frank had received his Certificate of Naturalization. He (and his wife by default) were officially United States citizens.

In the 1920s, South Beach was still a fairly rural area, although Staten Island had been incorporated into New York City in 1898 along with the other three outlying boroughs of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. (Staten Island was officially the Borough of Richmond until its name was changed to the Borough of Staten Island in 1975.)

The Ujlaky family owned a horse at one point and enjoyed recreation at the nearby beach for many years, including fun at the amusement rides that dotted the island.

Here are a few photos of family and friends enjoying time at the beach a decade later in 1936.

Ethel Ujlaky, Mary Kis and Helene Ujlaky

(I'm not sure of the identity of the young woman at the left)

Ethel Ujlaky with Mary Kis

Staten Island is no longer the rural arm of New York City that it was in the early 20th-century. Much of the world that the Ujlaky children enjoyed has changed.

Construction on the famous Verrazano-Narrows Bridge began in 1959 and was completed in 1964, providing easy access to Manhattan. (Until 1981, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world.) The amusement rides that the Ujlaky children knew no longer flourish at South Beach. There is, however, a current drive to bring them back and restore South Beach to its former self as a center of family fun.

Visitors today may have difficulty visualizing Staten Island the way that Frank and Helen Ujlaky saw it when they first brought their family to live in South Beach back in 1921, or when thirty years earlier, a Staten Island native named William T. Davis wrote a poetic tribute to the island:

In Memory of Staten Island

~ William Thompson Davis, 1892

How pleasant were the green woods
and the fields where we did stray,

Where grey the thorny cactus
and the sunflower spread its ray;

Where we sat beneath the tree
and watched the quiet blue Kill

And the haze softly settling
o'er the distant Jersey hill;

We saw the diamonds sparkle
on the little rippling waves,

Purely did they sparkle
and brightly shone their rays.

I see then now they glitter
though the warm sunshine is gone,

And I hear the gentle murmur -
'tis the waves' rippling song.

On the wall the ivy climbed,
so dark and so green,

And with the bending goldenrod
twined the purple bean.

We saw a chipmunk running
o'er the dead and rustling leaves,

And we heard a constant buzzing -
'twas the buzzing of the bees.

Sang a bunting low and sadly
in the old orchard tree,

He sang so faint and sadly
and his song was sweet to me.

I hear him now a-singing,
though warm sunshine is gone,

And I hear that gentle murmur -
'tis the waves' rippling song.

For more on Staten Island, see The New York Public Library's Staten Island Bibliography 1821-2004.

You might also enjoy viewing the New York Public Library's Digital Image Gallery collection of South Beach, Staten Island postcard images. Included are some great images of local landmarks and fashionable "bathing costumes" of days gone by.

Sources of images:

• Staten Island map, circa 1941, from Rootsweb's A Brief History of Richmond County, Staten Island
• Photos of Nugent Avenue home and Ujlaky family and friends in possession of the author

Other sources:

• "In Memory of Staten Island" from Days Afield on Staten Island by William Thompson Davis, 1892, 3rd printing 1937, reprinted 1994 by Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences

Geography Awareness Week: From Eastern Europe to NYC

In honor of Geography Awareness Week, I encourage you to make a visit to the series I posted last year at this time. I took a little visit (by way of online quizzes) to the parts of Eastern Europe that my 100 Years in America ancestors' hail from, and then flew back to New York for a final geography stop there.

Though you might think you know a little bit about these parts of the world, you'll probably be surprised at what you don't know. Best of luck to you on the quizzes and happy Geography Awareness Week!

• Hungary
• Croatia
• The former Austria-Hungary
• New York City, USA

"Cousins in genealogy", the COG and me

When I first began my journey into the world of the family history blog I envisioned the fruition of something I had been hoping to see for a long time: the connection of my extended family. Reaching across various branches of my family tree, state and country borders, and numerous generations (at least those generations who visited the internet), my family history blogs would, I hoped, be an avenue where I could finally easily share what I had learned and was continuing to learn about our family's amazing story. Siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins (first, second, third, etc.), aunts, uncles, and on and on - I hoped they would all read my blogs and get to know the fascinating lives of our ancestors as I had begun to.

I do have a nice group of loyal readers within various branches of my family, and have enjoyed connecting with some previously unknown cousins thanks to blogging. However, it didn't take long for me to realize that the majority of my extended family was not waiting daily with bated breath for the next blog article from me.

During those very early days of blogging, when I was trying to sort out my purpose in writing (along with the mechanics of putting it all online) and connect with readers, I was encouraged by the great camaraderie that I found with other family history bloggers. A few bloggers in particular found me online (or I found them) and we shared comments, emails and support. It was very heartening to this family historian taking my first steps into the blogosphere to know that there were others out there also - writing their own blogs and taking the time to read mine.

Two of those bloggers that were very helpful to me in the beginning as online mentors were Jasia of Creative Gene and Thomas MacEntee of Destination Austin Family. Each was always willing to patiently answer this newbie's technical questions, taking the time to ease my transition into the blogosphere. (Now thanks to the expertise Thomas shares at Bootcamp for Genea-Bloggers and GeneaBloggers, we all have open access to his step-by-step tutorials without having to bug him via email. Thanks, Thomas!)

Besides their technical help, both Thomas and Jasia provided me with encouragement to write more (and continue to connect with other bloggers) thanks to their involvement with carnivals. Who can forget the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (2007) that they both dreamed up? Thomas took us on a fast and furious writing adventure throughout that year's Advent season. I wrote more than I ever could have imagined writing about the traditions of my ancestors' Christmases past on all three of my blogs (here at 100 Years in America, here at Small-leaved Shamrock, and here at A light that shines again) and I was exhausted. I couldn't imagine how Thomas felt after being the host and also contributing articles. I'm sure he enjoyed his rest that Christmas.


In terms of carnivals, however, no genealogy carnival has yet come close to topping what Jasia has accomplished through the Carnival of Genealogy (otherwise known as The COG). As a blog carnival host myself for the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture (now two years old and sixteen editions strong), I am in awe when I think of the quantity of carnival editions that Jasia has written as host of the Carnival of Genealogy (now three and a half years old and eighty-three editions strong!). Each edition that she has dreamed up, publicized, organized and written has taken much of her time - and it is has all been done gratis, just pure gift for all those of us contributing and reading.

A very special thank-you to Jasia for the "blogging marathon" that she has run (and continues to run) with her wonderful Carnival of Genealogy. I was very happy to take the baton from her once and run with it to allow her to catch her breath (Carnival of Genealogy, 52nd edition on "Age") and would be very happy to do so again. Please know, Jasia, that your readers and writers appreciate your work very much.

To all of you that I have connected with over the past few years through the COG and through other avenues in the genealogy branch of the blogosphere, thanks for writing your blogs, reading a little of what I've written, and taking the time to connect so that we could encourage one another. I truly consider you "cousins in genealogy".

If you'd like to read my own submissions to various Carnival of Genealogy editions, you can visit them here at 100 Years in America, here at Small-leaved Shamrock and here at A light that shines again. I'll be reposting a few of my favorites this week in honor of the COG and of Geography Awareness Week. You can read them here:

• "The waves' rippling song": South Beach, Staten Island
• Međimurje: Meeting place of rivers and cultures
• The view from my corner of the world

This story has been submitted as part of the 83rd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic is "What the COG means to me". Visit Jasia's Creative Gene for the carnival.

The image of the Oak tree in winter is circa 1840's. You can view similar historic images from the Fox Talbot Museum at http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/resources/photo.html.

Shades of wonderful

Though I'm busy taking care of my new baby, I couldn't resist taking the time to share the news about footnoteMaven's new baby: Shades of the Departed - The Magazine.

If you are a fan of her Shades of the Departed or footnoteMaven blogs, or are unaware of those but interested in old photographs and/or the past in general, take the time to visit her new online magazine. As she states in the introduction, she and her fellow writers have "combined the fascination of old images with new technology". She's taken the look of a printed magazine about vintage photography (and topics related to using those images today), and has made it all readable entrirely online.

Voila!

A beautiful collaboration by footnoteMaven and some of my other favorite writers, Shades magazine is a masterfully designed work that is a great place to spend some time. It is a treasure trove of good ideas and information - I greatly look forward to digging into reading more of it and also to seeing what's in store in future editions.

Congratulations to footnoteMaven and friends on the beginning of a marvelous new work!