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.

Of Birmingham and Hungarian nut rolls

The cookbook I treasure, now that my Mom is gone, is a dog-eared, folksy collection of Hungarian and some American recipes. It was collated together by the St. Stephen's Mother Club in Birmingham of East Toledo, Ohio. Birmingham is not an actual place you can google map; it's an old historic district that began in the 1890's in East Toledo. The boundaries started at the Maumee river and grew as more immigrants came to work in the smokey, industrial factories that provided jobs. It was coined "Birmingham" because of it's resemblance to the English industrial city in the West Midlands that was a center of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.  By 1900, Toledo's Birmingham had many factories, a large Hungarian population. It sprouted many churches to hold the numerous religious beliefs among their workers who were mostly Greek Catholic, Reformed, Catholic plus, a few Baptists. St. Stephen's on Genesee Street was a Catholic church. Today, Birmingham still hosts a Hungarian festival every August.



My Mom did not bake much but she loved cookbooks.  Her mother did, and then skipped a generation to her daughter, who does roll out this Hungarian nut bread every year with her sons!

     HUNGARIAN NUT ROLL

1. 1 envelope or cake yeast, 1/4 Cup warm milk, pinch of sugar
2. Dissolve above and let raise in a warm place
3. 1/2 lb. Butter, 4 egg yolks , 1 Cup half and half , 4 cups unsifted flour,1 tsp. salt, 3 tablesp. of sugar
4. Sift flour, salt and sugar;beat yolks, add cream.Melt butter and combine all ingredients of yeast mixture  flour mixture, eggs and cream .
5. Work together until mixture is well combined. Divide into 3 equal balls and set in fridge for several hours.
6. Roll each ball as thin ( but not too thin ) as pie crust. Spread with nut filling.

NUT FILLING FOR THE NUT ROLL

1 1/2 lbs. walnuts, ground

4 eggs whites , beaten stiff

1 cup sugar

grated rind of lemon

• After spreading the dough with filling, roll like you would jelly roll, not too tight. Place three rolls side by side in a pan about 13 1/2 inches long, 9 1/2 inches wide. Set in warm place. Let rise about two hours, brush with beaten egg and bake 40 - 40 45 minutes at 350 degrees. NOTE: I never did the egg whites or lemon rind - we either made the filling like a simple boiled sugar syrup with water and sugar and ground walnuts; also have done it with a teeny bit of milk heated with the nuts, sugar  & cinnamon to make a paste.          

note: This article /recipe first appeared 2011-12-12 @ Hungarian Family Record. 

Looking in Michigan Marriages

       My Great-Grandparents lived in Michigan, specifically the Hungarian neighborhood of Del Ray. They married in 1899. I have been looking for their marriage record since 1980. Over a cup of coffee and coffeecake one morning at her kitchen table, my Grandmother suddenly brought out a slip of paper from her dresser with the family dates on it that were copied from a book from my Great-Grandparent's house. It was not a family Bible like most Hungarians kept in their homes. It was either a lexicon, geography or encyclopedia, probably published in Hungary, as my Great-Grandfather was not Catholic. He supposedly eschewed all manners of institutionalized religions.

I have never seen the original data or the "book" so I was looking at secondary evidence, copied by my Grandmother. I did not weigh that date too heavily until I saw the same marriage date for them in his naturalization records. TIP : Naturalization records for immigrants MAY CONTAIN their marriage date and place.

With that marriage data in hand, letters flew back and fourth to many government levels of Michigan looking for a marriage registration with no results. Simultaneously, there were many years of letter-writing with various ecclesiastical locations trying to pinpoint their marriage record. They did not marry in Hungary either.

So imagine my delight when Ancestry released the Michigan marriage database ! See Michigan Marriage Records, 1867-1952
The original images are wonderfully preserved and detailed. They have couples' birthplaces, parents, occupations and the name of the pastor/minister who registered the marriage ( which one can cross index with city directories to locate the actual parish to receive more marriage data).
There is an index but with Eastern European searches, I heavily use the side panel BROWSE THIS COLLECTION.
1) Click a record type group ( Certificates or Registers)
2) Decide on a range of dates
3) Under the Description label, choose a location.
Happy Hunting !

Do you know what your ancestral home looks like ?

     When you do research on all your families as you crawl back in time, do you wanderlust about the places they lived in? Of course, as we go further back, our wish list of "travel ancestral home visits" gets bigger!

    Last spring, I had a client and she was traveling to her ancestral village to solve more mysteries. She asked me where my family lived in Abauj- Torna. I mentioned that they were 1/2 mile from the border of Slovakia. One day, I opened my mail, lo and behold, there were pictures of my ancestral village, Jablonca ! And not only of Jablonca but my Grandfather's family ancestral homestead in Hungary ! Still standing and obviously, in beautiful condition and surroundings.  Thank you, Cathy!

  In Hungarian records research, house numbers are noted quite frequently in church and census records so I knew that my Nagy family lived in Jablonca No. 9 [3]  for many generations. Eventually, the only remaining child that lived on, with descendants, immigrated to America and a paternal Aunt lived on at No. 9 Jablonca.

Here is my family from Jablonca No. 9:

István NAGY  Born 15 Jan 1842  Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary  [1]

Christened 16 Jan 1842 Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary   [2] 

married Susanna SEBÖ,  ( b. 16 Jan 1838, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary ) They married on 15 Apr 1863 in
Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary  [2] (witnesses at their wedding: Pal Zeman & Istvan Lorintz)

Children: 

1. István NAGY,   b. 25 May 1864, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary, d. 25 Sep 1864, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary
2. István NAGY,   b. 1 Nov 1865, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary,   d. 10 Feb 1875, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary
3. Lajos NAGY,   b. 3 Feb 1869, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary,   d. 19 Jun 1896, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary
4. Maria NAGY,   b. 13 Oct 1871, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary, d. 23 Aug 1873, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary
5. Joseph NAGY,   b. 19 Jul 1874, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary,   d. 18 Aug 1953, Toledo, Wood, Ohio,
6. István NAGY,   b. 3 Feb 1877, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary,   d. 3 Feb 1877, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary
7. Maria NAGY,   b. 3 Feb 1877, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary,   d. 5 Feb 1877, Jablonca, Abauj, Hungary

1) Church Records: Jablonca, Abauj-Torna,Hungary, Magyarországi Református Egyház, (Microfilm ,Genealogical Society of Utah), FHL 1924854., Rec# 2.

2)Church Records: Jablonca, Abauj-Torna,Hungary, Magyarországi Református Egyház, (Microfilm ,Genealogical Society of Utah), FHL 1924854., Other Entries.

3)Népszámlálás 1869 (Hungarian 1869 Census) .Author: Magyar Statisztikai Hivatal .(Manuscript/Manuscript on Film,Salt Lake City, Utah.Genealogical Society of Utah, 1998-1999)