Hungarian Churches in Detroit

            

Holy Cross Church, Detroit, Michigan by Diane M. Korzeniewski, OCDS,reproduced with her full permission. 

Holy Cross Church, Detroit, Michigan by Diane M. Korzeniewski, OCDS,reproduced with her full permission. 

Detroit had, at least, 7 churches in one neighborhood section to serve the new Hungarian immigrants in the 1890's when they flowed into this metropolis. Now, there is one lone church in the vanished Hungarian section of Detroit called Del Ray on South Street. Holy Cross was one of the newest parishes formed in 1905 for Hungarians that lived in Del Ray. It is now the only remaining Hungarian Catholic church in the entire state of Michigan. They still conduct masses in the Magyar language. They also have the Epiphany mass (Vizkereszt) this Sunday, 6th January 2012. The website to explore the activities at Holy Cross is Holy Cross Hungarian Roman Catholic Church

           My great-Aunt Marie was baptized in 1900 at All Saints Church on West Fort Street which may eventually be gobbled into a merge or extinction soon. I have not located the marriage of her parents that were married in Del Ray in 1899. The first Hungarian Catholic immigrants attended All Saints. The Lutherans went to the First Hungarian Lutheran Church on Thaddeus Street. There was also the First Hebrew Congregation of Del Ray, the Hungarian Baptist Church, the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church on Thaddeus Street called Szent Janos and a Hungarian Reformed Church that eventually relocated out at Allen Park, Michigan in the 1970's. All of these holy grounds are lost in the misty haze of urban decadence that is so common among our American rust-belt cities, and their people only remembered by the very few alive today.

          I am concerned about the records for these vanishing churches of Detroit. There is an old collection of church microfilms at the Burton Genealogical Library in Detroit. The GenWeb of Michigan posted a complete list on their site Burton Library Historical Collections. It's not complete and has not been updated. Family Search online did not seem to have many collections of the churches in Detroit with images to read but there is the Michigan, Birth and Christenings , 1775-1995 Index if one can tolerate the jumbled spellings of the Magyar names. Ancestry also seem to have indexed Detroit records for their Michigan collection but no images. I prefer the real McCoy of the actual church books on microfilms. I did keep a log of writing to all these parishes years ago for some records but a busy secretary may not find everything you need. I have located records that church staff have overlooked so the lesson is to always access the record books on microfilm yourself.

Holy Cross Church, Detroit, Michigan by Diane M. Korzeniewski, OCDS,reproduced with her full permission. 

This photo collection was provided by Diane M. Korzeniewski, OCDS from  her Blog, Te Deum Laudamus, and are reproduced with her full permission, and in accordance with her posted provisions which also require a link back to her Blog at http://te-deum.blogspot.com/ .  She may be contacted at TeDeumBlog@gmail.com . The photos and copyright remain her property.