Fraternity-Testvériség, 1965 (43. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1965-08-01 / 8-9. szám

FRATERNITY

3

JOSEPH KECSKEMETHY:

ITEMS OF INTEREST

“HIGHLIGHTS” of the Winning Scholarship Essays

HUNGARIANS IN AMERICA By Delphi Melinda Toth

“The Hungarian people did much to advance culture and civilization in Europe, but their influence did not stop there. America, too, has benefitted from the Hungarian influence in all areas of art, music, science, politics, etc.

“Many of the early colonists of America were Hungarian and a great number of them helped America win her independence through the Revolutionary War. The greatest number of them came to the New World, however, as a result of a book by Alexander Farkas de Bölöni, whose observations of America were published in Kolozsvár in 1834. Farkas came to the United States with Count Ferenc Béldy and the two of them joined together with Baron Farkas Wesselényi and Paul Balogh, two prominent Hungarian-Americans in Washington, D. C. The four of them were received in the White House by President Andrew Jackson, becoming the first Hungarians entertained in the American President’s home in Washington.

“The first Hungarian exile to seek a home in America was László Újházi, who came to New York in 1849 and settled with his wife, two daughters, three sons and several friends in Southern Iowa. He soon owned 10,000 acres of land and attracted other Hungarian colonists to the land he called New Buda. Újházi has the honor of possessing the first citizenship papers in the United States. He later became postmaster and is regarded as the first Hungarian involved in public service in the United States. In 1861 Újházi was appointed American Consul at Ancona by President Abraham Lincoln.”

Miss Toth writes of the arrival of Kossuth and his followers to America:

“In 1851 Louis Kossuth, the great Hungarian patriot, came to the United States. At the recommendation of the Ohio Legislature, Congress passed a resolution offering Kossuth’s group the use of free land on which to settle. Almost all of those who had followed Kossuth into exile joined him in America. Most of his group were of Hungary’s upper and middle classes, and the group added much to America. By 1860, the time of the American Civil War, about 4,000 Hungarians had settled in America About 800 brave Hungarian men served in the Union Army during the war, 100 of them as officers. Needless to say, these Hungarian men greatly aided the Union in winning the war.”