Hungarian Heritage Review, 1989 (18. évfolyam, 1-9. szám)
1989-02-01 / 2. szám
Hímgarian-Antericana What The Old Kossuth School Must Have Looked Like In 1907 THE BICENTENNIAL OF PLUM BOROUGH: THE MAGYARS OF PLUM BOROUGH, PENNSYLVANIA-by-STEPHEN W. PAULOVITCH "X marks the spot!" That’s the way it reads when you view an old treasure map. Usually, of course, the goal is to locate some long-hidden trove of gold and jewels, buried by pirates of old. In my case, however, the treasure was something entirely different. Not gold, but an old building. A school, to be precise. A school built in 1907 and named after Louis Kossuth, creator and leader of the great Hungarian fight for freedom back in 1848-49. The question, of course, was, "how did a school in Pennsylvania, built some fifty years after the Hungarian Revolution, get to be named after the Hungarian hero?" And I was determined to find the answer. CELEBRATING A BICENTENNIAL Plum Boro, just east of Pittsburgh, is the second largest boro in size in Pennsylvania. It is a largely rural area, with cattle and truck farms flourishing alongside of light industry. And in the school my children attend, where the celebration of the boro’s two hundredth anniversary was in progress, a small booklet entitled PLUM BORO - THEN AND NOW was being used to study the history of the immediate region. It was in this volume that the map appeared in which the "X" marked the spot of the Kossuth school. I sought out the lady who had written the book, Miss Jean Garlow, and found out that, unfortunately, she knew little about the founding of that particular institution. But I followed the map as best I could, and I found near the spot where the school might have been, a real estate sign that read, "Paul Miklós" ! A PROUD HUNGARIAN Mr. Miklós, a proud Hungarian of sixtysix years, knew the neighborhood quite well. He was proud of the fact that several other Hungarian families lived nearby. His own grandfather had worked in the mines of Pennsylvania manyyears before, and in the Miklós household, Hungarian was spoken. While he was interested and enthusiastic about the matter of finding some - thing about the Kossuth school or even determining its exact location, Mr. Miklós could only suggest that I get in touch with several other Hungarian folk nearby. He did point out where there had been a Hungarian dairy farm and local businesses owned by Hungarians. He also mentioned that a former councilman, Billy Bentz, is a Magyar, (continued next page) 8 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW FEBRUARY 1989
