In 1895, many Hungarians from the Paloc region of Hungary immigrated to Del Ray, Michigan. All Saint's Church, founded in 1896, is the oldest catholic parish in the Del Ray section of southwestern Detroit and absorbed many of the new Hungarian population into it's parish. It was joined by another Hungarian Church called Holy Cross which still stands in the area of what was once a huge Hungarian settlement in the early 1900's.
Years ago, I did the 1900 census of Del Ray looking for my Nagy and Rakai families. I found them living amongst their countrymen on Burdeno Street. The census cited their occupations as workers in the industrial plants that lined the river. The church records revealed a definite cluster of immigrants from Abauj, Gömör and other surrounding counties. I was able to trace many families back to Hungary by studying the Del Ray church records. Many microfilms of these Detroit church records are archived in the Burton Collection in downtown Detroit.
There is this great, folksy website, by "Gramps" R. S. Bujaki, about "Old Del Ray" for those of us with ties to this old neighborhood: http://www.old-delray.com/. My favorite part is seeing the dancers and violin strolling across the front page ! By the way, if one is wondering how a northern Michigan city got christened with the Spanish "Del Ray" name, Wikipedia cites that a Detroit-born soldier named Augustus Burdeno named it in honor of the the Battle of Molino Del Ray when he got back from the Mexican-American War. Del Ray also named a street after August Burdeno.
To see if you have Hungarian-born family in Del Ray in the 1900 census, I indexed Del Ray at : http://www.hungarianfamilyrecord.org/content/list-hungarian-natives-1900-del-raywayne-countymichigan-census.
No comments:
Post a Comment