Hungarian Heritage Review, 1987 (16. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1987-08-01 / 8. szám
other States of the Union, and last but not least, by the American Hungarian Federation, both in the official Bicentennial Year (1976), and in the officially proclaimed bicentennial anniversary year of Colonel Michael Kovats de Fabricy in 1979. These American commemorative events were happily echoed in Hungary whenever the two great radio programs of the United States, the Voice of America and the Radio Free Europe have informed the Hungarian public, often in lengthy interviews with American Hungarian historians and other participants in the commemorative programs. And, when the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen, Hungary's first Christian king was returned to Hungary and the official address delivered by Secretary of State Vance included a thoughtful reference to Colonel Kovats, the Hungarian hero of the American War of Independence, the, up to that time, cold attitude of Hungary’s official authorities warmed up, and a flow of public information in the form of valuable research articles, books, commemorative addresses and stamps, began to create a new awareness of the great personality of this Hungarian military man. A Still Unanswered Question: Where Did This Man Come From? All these commemorative publications and events, however, were constantly overshadowed by an unanswerable albeit seldom expressed question. It became rather painfully evident that nobody was in the position, including this writer, to provide any answer to a routine question about a prominent personality like Colonel Kovats: who were the parents and other ancestors of this excellent military leader, and, in general, what was the ancestral lineage, and, thus, what were the historical and genealogical heritage traits of such a human monument of character, courage and dedication to higher ideals? Since I used to be in close contact with the late Edmund Vasvary, one of the foremost researchers of Colonel Kovats’ life story and an eminent creator of the “Kovats lore” in America, I am in the position to report on the near desperate state of mind of this great student of American Hungarian history who, while trying to give his best efforts to his task, the writing of a complete and reliable biography of the Hungarian colonel, he was still not able, up to the very last day of his life, to serve his readers and the scholarly public with the names of his hero’s parents, let alone to provide information about the history of his ancestors. (In fact, a biography of Colonel Kovats, in preparation by me since a number of years, could not be completed and published for lack of the same essential personal data.) As it happened when Edmund Vasvary had found the Kovats letter among the “Franklin Papers” at Philadelphia, enabling him to conclusively identify Colonel Kovats as a Hungarian in General Washington’s army, “Fate” moved its hand again, this time involving me. As I have already informed the American Hungarian public via a bilingual journal entitled Testvériség — Fraternity (vol. 59, no. 1-3, Jan.March, 1981, p. 19-20) published by the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America, a fraternal insurance company in Washington, D.C. (which has also published the original Kovats letter discovered by Edmund Vasvary), I happened to meet an old Hungarian friend of mine, Dr. László Keszi Kovats, of Budapest, at an international congress of researchers of Finno- Ugrian peoples and languages, held in August, 1980, at Turku, Finland, the ancient university city of that country. When he was inquiring about my current research activities, I have mentioned, among others, my work on the biography of Colonel Michael Kovats de Fabricy. With a good chuckle, he gamely remarked: “And, as all other ^Mungarian-JVmertcana American Hungarian historians, you don’t even know who were the parents of Colonel Kovats?” With a demure expression in my face, I admitted that, yes, that’s the fact. Then, as a good friend, he smiled at me, telling that I better turn to him for information because he comes from the same ancestral background as the famous Colonel, and he would be willing to prepare for me a copy of a long, 17-page document, originally written in Latin by an ancestor of his, Stephanus (István) Kovats de Keszi, town notary at Tiszacsege, Hungary. Basing his final text upon an earlier, mid-18th century version of the Kovats family history, prepared by a relative, Gabriel (Gabor) Hegyi de Zadorfalva, a county notary of Heves and Szolnok counties, Stephanus Kovats de Keszi updated his documentation, ending it with the year of 1783, that is, four years after the tragic death of Colonél Kovats in America. Then, upon completion of the family history, it was deposited in the famous family archives of the Vay family (which also housed thousands of other documents important to numerous Hungarian noble families mainly of Eastern Hungary) where it remained for more than 150 years without being published or even registered and analyzed for its contents. In view of the limited space available for this article, I don’t wish to fill the pages of this journal with the full story of how my friend, Dr. László Keszi Kovács has found and copied the original family history in the family archives of the Vay family at Tiszaberkesz, Hungary, in 1941. According to that document, a copy of which, made by Dr. Kovács for me, is in my possession (waiting to get published in full in my Kovats biography now in preparation), the family’s first known ancestor, Johannes Besenyő” became a “faber ferrarius” (iron smith), mentioned also as “Kowach Regis”, meaning the “King’s smith”, and was rewarded by Hungary’s king Charles Robert, of the —continued next page 16 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW AUGUST 1987
