Bethlen Almanac 1999 (Ligonier)

The Hungarian Reformed Federation of America

old when he was killed in Duquesne, Pennsylvania on 25 June 1906. He died from internal injuries sustained after being hit by a hoisting bucket.

Duquesne was the site of the USX/Camegie Steel Corporation. The death certificate listed the burial place of Joseph Toth as St. Stephen’s Cemetery in North Versailles, a town on the opposite side of the Monongahela River from Duquesne. The problem I encountered was that no one I spoke to had any recollection of a St. Stephen’s Cemetery and it was not listed on any map of the Pittsburgh area.

My break came in October, 1997. I read a newspaper article in the PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE regarding a 100-year-old cemetery in North Versailles that had been vandalized. It was St. Stephen’s, a Hungarian cemetery that had been forgotten for almost 30 years. The North Versailles police department was very helpful in giving me instructions on how to locate the cemetery. The most amazing coincidence was that we had driven past it on Westinghouse Drive on numerous occasions when visiting my husband’s parents. Very few people were aware of the existence of the old cemetery tucked away in the woods. At the first available opportunity, I visited the cemetery but was disheartened by the state of neglect. Tombstones were toppled over, others were overgrown with vines and weeds. It looked hopeless, but again, against all odds, I looked up an embankment and found the headstone after a 10 minute search! It read:

“It nyuksik Putina Toth Josef Borsod Megye Szendroi Szül 1873 evben Meghalt 1906 ik evben Beke Hamvaria”

which roughly translates to: Here rests Joseph Putina Toth, from Borsod County, Szendro, bom in 1873, died in 1906, May his ashes rest in peace.

After checking LDS microfilms of Szendro, Hungary, I learned that Joseph TOTH was bom on 19 January 1873, several weeks after

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