The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-10-01 / 10. szám
Page 6 THE EIGHTH HUNGARIAN TRIBE October, 1983 HUNGARIAN—AMERICANA-BYPAUL PULITZER A famous pioneer and explorer, as well as the head of the Mission of St. Ignotus of California and official Visitator of all of the missions established by Father Junipero Serra. Father Ferdinand Konság of Buda mapped California in 1749. SOME EARLY HUNGARIANS IN AMERICA About 680 years after “Tyrker” (Török) visited North America as a member of the crew captained by the Viking explorer, Leif Ericson (1,000 A.D.), and less than 100 years after Stephen Parmenius of Buda (Budai István) visited the New World as the official chronicler of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s ill-fated expedition (1583), Baron John Ratkay (Rátkay János), a member of the Society of Jesus, arrived in that part of Mexico which is now the states of New Mexico and California (1680). Assigned to convert the “natives” into good Christians, he was butchered by them four years later. When Increase Mather’s book about America (“De Successu Evangelii apud Indos Occidentales in Nova Anglia”) was first translated and published in Hungary in 1694, it kindled the wanderlust of Johannes Kelpius (Kelp János), who was bom at Szász-Dalya in Transylvania. A Pietist, he arrived in America the same year with a group of German settlers and led them to the colony etablished by William Pen.i (Philadelphia). T!r. • became a ligious hermit about whom John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote: “Painful Kelpius from his hermit den By Wissahickon, maddest of good men . . .” Another settler was Izsák Nándor de Sárossy, who joined the Germantown colony (Pennsylvania) of Francis Daniel Pastorius in 1695. A playboyish rake, who selfordained himself as a reborn Christian after being kicked out of Windsheim, Germany, he soon got into an argument over compensation for “spreading the word of the Lord” and, when Pastorius refused to pay him for services rendered, took off for the wilds of Maryland and was never heard from again. Last, but not least, is Father Ferdinand Konság (Konschak) of Buda, the Jesuit missionary who, during the early 1700’s, became head of the Mission of St. Ignatius in California and official Visitator of all the California missions established by Father Junipero Sem A pioneer and explorer, he mapped Gal arcia in 17 -
