Bethlen Almanac 1999 (Ligonier)
The Hungarian Reformed Federation of America
Hungarian Rhapsody or All Roads Lead to Pittsburgh by Laura Janocko My grandmother, Anna Toth KEREKES immigrated to Passaic, New Jersey in 1922 from Szendro, a farming village in northeastern Hungary. She sometimes spoke of her father, Joseph Putina TOTH, who was killed in a mining accident in the U.S. while she was still an infant living in Hungary. Like many men at the time, my great-grandfather preceded his family to America, intending to bring them here when he earned enough money to pay their passage. As an adult, my grandmother kept a stylized portrait of a man in a Hungarian cavalry uniform. I now have the portrait but have no idea if it bears any resemblance to my great-grandfather. I suspect the portrait was given to my grandmother by her mother as a reminder of the man she never knew. Our family lived in the vicinity of Passaic in northern New Jersey, so we were surprised when my grandmother informed us that her father was buried near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She shared this information with us on a trip to Pittsburgh in 1983, when my parents were en route to meet their future in-laws. Until that time, I had assumed that my grandparents were the first to make the excursion to America. While in Pittsburgh, my grandmother was determined to locate the grave of her father, but was unsuccessful despite several visits to Hungarian Churches in the area. Several years later, my husband and I both obtained jobs at the University of Pittsburgh and settled in a nearby suburb of Pittsburgh. By then, my grandmother had passed away but it was always in the back of my mind to locate the burial place of her father. In 1995, the Senator John Heinz History Center opened, an excellent museum depicting the rich cultural heritage of the Pittsburgh area. On one visit to the museum, a librarian in the museum archives helped me search the cemetery registers on file at the library. When this search failed to yield information about Joseph TOTH, he suggested I send for great-grandfather’s death certificate from the State Archives in New Castle. A copy of the death certificate arrived two months later and contained new information. Joseph TOTH was about 35 years 31
