Fraternity-Testvériség, 1999 (77. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1999-12-01 / 4. szám

FRATERNITY

Page 13

Hungarian Rhapsody or All Roads Lead to Pittsburgh

By Laura Janocko

My grandmother, Anna Toth KEREKES immigrated to Passaic, New Jersey in 1922 from Szendro, a farming village in northeastern Hungary. She sometimes spoke of her father, Joseph Putina TOTH, who was killed in a mining accident in the U. S. while she was still an infant living in Hungary. Like many men at the time, my greatgrandfather preceded his family to America, intending to bring them here when he earned enough money to pay their passage. As an adult, my grandmother kept a stylized portrait of a man in a Hungarian cavalry uniform. I now have the portrait but have no idea if it bears any resemblance to my great-grandfather. I suspect the portrait was given to my grandmother by her mother as a reminder of the man she never knew.

Our family lived in the vicinity of Passaic in northern New Jersey, so we were surprised when my grandmother informed us that her father was buried near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She shared this information with us on a trip to Pittsburgh in 1983, when my parents were en route to meet their future in-laws. Until that time, I had assumed that my grandparents were the first to make the excursion to America. While in Pittsburgh, my grandmother was determined to locate the grave of her father, but was unsuccessful despite several visits to Hungarian Churches in the area. Several years later, my husband and I both obtained jobs at the University of Pittsburgh and settled in a nearby suburb of Pittsburgh. By then, my grandmother had passed away but it was always in the back of my mind to locate the burial place of her father.

In 1995, the Senator John Heinz History Center opened, an excellent museum depicting the rich cultural heritage of the Pittsburgh area. On one visit to the museum, a librarian in the museum archives helped me search the cemetery registers on file at the library. When this search failed to yield information about Joseph TOTH, he suggested I send for great-grandfather’s death certificate from the State Archives in New Castle. A copy of the death certificate arrived two months later and contained new information. Joseph TOTH was about 35 years 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, born in 1873, died in 1906, May his ashes rest in peace.

After checking LDS microfilms of Szendro, Hungary, I learned that Joseph TOTH was born on 19 January 1873, several weeks after his own father (Joseph Putina TOTH) died at age 33 of cholera. His ancestors were shepherds in northeastern Hungary and his widowed mother, Maria B ARNOCZKI, was left to raise four children on her own. With the help of the McKeesport Heritage Society, I obtained a copy of the newspaper article (June 30, 1906, MCKEESPORT DAILY NEWS) describing the accident that killed my great-grandfather. The headlines read “Scoop Chain Broke; One dead, one hurt. An Accident on Sand Barge at Duquesne (Mill) Yesterday. One who met death and leaves family abroad.” Joseph TOTH, it said was a laborer at the Rodgers Sand Company, a subsidiary of Carnegie Steel. He boarded on Mill Street and had been in this country only a few weeks. I never learned how my great-grandmother Julia MOLNÁR cared for my grandmother and her brother following her husband’s death.

During Thanksgiving weekend, 1997, all of the descendants of Joseph TOTH gathered at his grave to pay tribute, 91 years after his death.

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