Information from a Friend

Names like Pachuta which is it's original spelling because they were Greek Catholic, became Pacsuta under Hungarian rule since they were the largest ethnic group and their laws after 1848 said, if you could speak Hungarian, the official language, you were Magyar.  There was a large Hungarian group in Trenton, NJ, and they all went to St. Stephen's Greek & Roman Catholic Church or St. Nicholas Hungarian church. 

The town of Desznica or Doshnycja in Ruthenian or Rusyn was all Greek Catholic except for two Poles and a few Jews.  The latter probably ran the store or Polish nobles lands. This can be found in the Lemko Surnames in the Austrian Cadastral Records.

It seems the Ruthenians from Galicia in the Trans-Carpathian regions were under Austrian and Hungarian rule and they were fragmented deliberately and so the Ruthenians took on the culture and language of the dominent ethnic culture for survival.  Some of the territory in now in the Ukraine and some is in SE Poland.

I looked at your web site and was very impressed with it.  Certainly in the communications section which many Americans have a great deal of difficulty doing. 

I understand and read Hungarian and the language does not have a he or she pronoun and it's metaphoric, so it is rich in expression.

When I was a teacher for  25 years, I only sent 4 students to the office for discipline and then became their pro bono lawyer.  I used the metaphoric language to teach and put everything in a dramatic story telling mode so the student's were fascinated with the interplay of human drama right down to the simplest thing.

It is in the walk and talk, one student told me was the reason I controlled the class without seeming to put controls or rules written all over the place. I will go to the website you gave me.  It's like putting together a giant picture puzzle.  That area of central Europe certainly has had it's dramatic and violent experience over 800 years.

I have done a great deal of work on genealogy on both sides of my family, mother and dad's side.  I appreciated the work you did on your family page and the photographs of your family members.

The 6 August 2001 edition of U.S. News & World Reports cover story was: America 1900-2000, Who We Were-Who We Are.  How an Epic Century Changed a Nation. It's a superficial account of immigration in this country but doesn't get to the core of the 1880-1914 immigration from southern & Central Europe into America. 

They were not your "poor huddled masses yearning to be free," but rather the ones who were genuinely fed up and took the risk to go into the unknown, but it had to be better than what they had left.

History books are written about the powerful and the generals who wage the game of war, but the immigrations to America are about the ordinary people who were filled with courage and hope born from disgust with a system of nobility they could never enter into.

In Vienna in the Chancellery, they kept a list of all of the nobility both petite and grand in the empire.  I always thought of it as their AKC papers in doggy land.

As I wrote to you before, there were 37 different ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Hungarians were the largest ethnic group.  Therefore, in Zemplem County that is half in Slovakia and the other half in Hungary, took on the language and culture of Magyar (Hungarian).  It is the same here in America, where we are born here and speak English and are culturally American.

My family thought of themselves as Magyar and my grandfather was a fierce Magyar.  My two uncles and my father went to Hungarian Catholic schools here to read and write the language and it was spoken at home.  That is why I can speak Hungarian. It is also why tracing family genealogy is so difficult in the old Austro-Hungarian empire.

I might add, the empire was originally historical Hungary and the Austrians did not enter the scene until the battle of Mohacs in 1526.  The King of Hungary, Lajos was fighting the Turks and he was mortally wounded and fell from his horse and died.  The crown fell from his head and that is why the Hungary's crown cross has been bent.  King Lajos was married to a Hapsburg and her brother took over and partitioned part of Hungary, the Turks got another third and the last part was Hungary.

Hungarian is not an Indo-European language family and does not have any  relationship to any other language of Europe.  The family names goes first and then the personal name such as in Asia.

In the ninth century, the Magyars were in the Caucus Mountain region but were being pushed out by other tribes.  The King of the Avars in the Trans-Danubain area called on Arpad, the leading head of the seven Magyar tribes to help him out.  Arpad moved man, woman and child in two years over the Carpathian mountains and thanked the King of the Avars for his land. This was in 890 AD. 

The shock troops of the Magyars went on to the burn and pillage as far as France until they were defeated by Otto of Saxony in 955 AD.  By 1000 King Istvan (Stephen) made a critical choice of Christian religion and chose Roman catholic.  This was necessary to prevent the Magyars from becoming the outlaws in a Christian Europe.  In 1241 they were over run my Mongol hordes and the southern part of Hungary was decimated of 90% of the population.  King Bela called for colonist to repopulate the country.  That is how so many Germans, Slavs, etc., became Hungarian. The name of Toth, means Slav, Nemeth is German etc. Belgrade was Nandorsferhavar or Ferdinand's White Fortress.  Interesting.

Hungarian has no he or she pronoun or inactive verbs such as to be, was, is. The verb changes to let one know who is doing what.  It is a metaphoric language and changes the behavior of the speaker.  There is no masculine or feminine concerning objects but there is a personal and formal "you" to bring closeness or distance to the speakers. There are no diphthongs and each vowel is pronounced.  Also words are attached to the base of a word.  The emphasis is always on the first syllable, so Bela Lugosi in Count Dracula, says, "Llllet mme sssuck your blllood".

With Hungary attached to the dead horse of the Austrian empire through the comprise of 1867, they were dragged into W.W.I and lost.  They also lost 72% of historical Hungary and the British carved up that area and made Romania and put one of their cousins on the throne, the same with Yugoslavia, and created Czechoslovakia mixing the Czechs with the Slovaks.  The northern part of the Empire became Poland.  What a mess.

There is a black humored Hungarian joke.  An interviewer stopped an old man in the town of Mukachevo.  He asked him about his life.  The old man said, "I was born in Hungary, went to school in Czechoslovakia, got married in Hungary, and have worked most of my life for the Soviet Union and now I live in the Ukraine."  The interviewer said, "My you certainly have traveled a great deal in your life."  The old man replied, "No, I never left my town."  He had been born in Munkacs.

Slovakia is better run than Poland which is still a mess.  Hungary was into capitalism under the table back in the 1970s but still had an active secret police everywhere. The secret police was originally installed by the Hapsburgs. Although linguistically the "experts" say that Hungarian is a Fino-Ugric language family, there is still a mystery about the origin of the language. 

In Mesopotamia under the Sumerians, the city of Ur, Bela and Susa existed along with the Syrian city of Arpad.  The Sumerian word for God is Istvan, Urok is on every Hungarian men's room, and nap, star is the same in both languages. The monastic order of the essenes written up in the Dead Sea Scrolls, esz in Hungarian means thinking, not the mind or the brain. Essenes comes from a Sumerian word. sz letter in Hungarian is an s sound in English. Mystery???

I hope this will help you to understand the area.  Kosice use to be called Kassa and was a Hungarian city.