Cs.Sebestyén Kálmán - Szvircsek Ferenc: Salgótarjáni új almanach 1. (Salgótarján, 1997)
VI. TRADÍCIÓ ÉS KULTÚRA - 12. Rezümék
rial region of the country remained Hungarian. In the 18th century village Tarján became the part of the estate of Volkra, Szluha, then Jankovich families. The latest family had a mansion built in neoclassical style and after the fire of 1821 this only building remained in the town as the memento of the feudal village. The local landowner, Antal Jankovich had already known about the rich coal layer that had been waiting for opening up under his game preserve but he was afraid of the entrepreneur who had offered the necessary capital for opening a coal mine. This fear made him conservative and he decided to live the same life as his ancestors had lived. As he said: 'this place had been called as „Tarján without bread" and, in spite of this, the serfs were too much for the landowners. What would happen if they had even bread thanks to the mining works?' The era of enterprises started after the death of Antal Jankovich (1855) in Salgótarján when at the estate of his heirs the entrepreneurs opened up coal in 1856. The village itself, as it was called Salgó-Tarján then, was built in a narrow valley which was surrounded by the mountains from three sides and was open only from the south and ended up in the basin of Tarján and Zagyva brooks. The local people were making brooms and wooden tools, cultivated their poor tenures or worked as day-labourers. The exploration of lignite resources and their usage gave a chance to the village to build industrial plants on its territory which played the main role in its development; it opened new era of its history for the establishment of a town. It seems to be quite evident that a kind of rapid improvement like this makes healthy effect on the inhabitants of the village. But when this process goes hand in hand with the desire of making a fortune very quickly, the development of the village will lie behind. That was the fate of Salgótarján, too: no-one settled down here with
