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.

Del Ray, Michigan ~ long ago.........

                     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.