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In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller published his map and named the newly discovered continent America in deference to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Hungarian linguists maintain that the name Amerigo derives from the eleventh century Hungarian saint Emeric (Szent Imre). Saint Emeric is a Roman Catholic Saint. The map has been referred to in various circles as America's birth certificate as it is the first document on which the name "America" appears. The only copy of this printed map is displayed in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, though the digitized version is available online for everyone.
Following the discovery of the Americas by Europeans, Hungarians who visited for the first few centuries were explorers and missionaries.
The first Hungarian who is documented to have set foot in North America was Stephen Parmenius of Buda (1555/60-1583). He was the chronicler of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland, chosen after he dedicated a Latin ode to Gilbert. He recorded the exploration in poetic form in Latin, but only one poem has survived--De navigatione Humpfredi Gilberte carmen. In 1578 Gilbert obtained from Queen Elizabeth the charter he had long sought, to plant a colony in North America. His first attempt failed, and cost him his whole fortune; but, after further service in Ireland, he sailed again in 1583 for Newfoundland. In the August of that year Gilbert took possession of the harbor of St. John and founded his colony, but on the return voyage he went down with his ship in a storm. Stephen Parmenius also perished in that storm.
John Rátkay (Ratkai), was a Hungarian Jesuit who worked as a missionary in what is today New Mexico, until he was poisoned by natives in 1684. Two of the German language letters that he sent from the New World were later published in a book.
The first book about America in Hungarian, the translation of De successu evangelii apud Indos Occidentales, in Nova Anglia was published in 1694.
John Kelp (Kelpio, Kelpius) born 1673 in Szasz-Dalya, Transylvania, came to America in 1694. He studied theology in Hungary and in Germany, and became a hermit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The part of the town where he lived has been named the Hermitage after him. He died in 1708.
Father Ferdinand Konschak (Konsag) died in California in 1759. He left Hungary sometime during the first half of the 18th century and served as the head of the Mission of St. Ignotius in California. He also became the visitator of all the Californian missions.
141 Hungarians fought in the Revolution under the American flag, and probably 140 hussars (cavalrymen) fought under the French flag as well. The most famous among them was Colonel Michael Kováts de Fabricy (1724-1779), who became a commander of the Pulaski Legion during the American War of Independence. He died in the defense of Charleston, SC, on May 11, 1779. Born in Karczag, Hungary, Kováts came to America in 1777 to help establish an independent republic, and soon, with General Casimir Pulaski, formed a cavalry corp that earned the respect of the British opposing it. He pioneered the use of guerilla tactics. A statue in honor of him was dedicated at the Embassy of Hungary in Washington DC in October 2003. There are materials about him in English as well: Foreign-born American Patriots : sixteen volunteer leaders in the Revolutionary War.
Merchants from Hungary settled in New Orleans. The first settler was Benjamin Spitzer, a Hungarian ship captain who opened a shop and tried to establish trade between the U.S. and Hungary.
Alexander Farkas de Bölöni (Bölöni Farkas Sándor) met a few Hungarians while traveling in America, among them fur traders who settled in New Orleans. He wrote about his travels in the book Utazás Észak-Amerikában [Journey in North America] which was published in Hungary in 1831. He described the political system, economic conditions and the culture of the United States in a positive light, influencing Hungarian readers in a political era when breaking free from the feudal system of the Habsburg monarchy and establishing a republic became a common goal. The original book in Hungarian is available online External.
As a culmination of the reform movement of the early 19th century, Hungarians started a revolution on March 15, 1848. They demanded independence from the Habsburg court and sought to establish a republic the principles of which were summed up in 12 points External. This led to a war called Szabadságharc [the fight for freedom] against the Austrian army and then against the Russian army as well, who came to the Austrian monarch's help. The United States recognized the revolutionary Hungarian government and attempted to send a special and confidential agent to Hungary. After the revolution was crushed, and martial law was introduced, several groups of Hungarian refugees came to the United States.
Refugees who left Hungary after the 1848 revolution started a Hungarian community called New Buda in Iowa. They wished to create a community of Hungarians that would remind them of their home country and in which their political ideals of a republic would also be implemented. However, frontier life proved to be very hard. Other midwestern settlements, such as Davenport were more successful.
More and more travel books were published by Hungarians, such as Utazás Éjszakamerikában [Journey in North America], by Agoston Haraszthy, the second edition of which, printed in 1850, is available online External. Haraszty later moved to the U.S. and planted vineyards in California.
The travel book Amerikai utazásom [My American travel] by Nendtvich Károly Miksa was published in 1851. This book too has been digitized and is available online External.
The U.S. government sent a warship to Turkey to bring the leader of the Hungarian revolution Louis Kossuth to the United States. Kossuth was warmly welcomed and travelled extensively in the states that made up the United States at the time, and delivered many highly acclaimed speeches. At the time there were more than 250 poems, dozens of books, and thousands of editorials written about his travels in the U.S.
During the Civil War about 800 Hungarians volunteered for the Union Army, as opposed to eight who fought for the South. Many of the Hungarians who resettled in the U.S. after the failed revolution of 1848 had military experience and enlisted to fight for the Union. Most of them settled in the Northern states to begin with because they disliked the institution of slavery. Most of them served as officers during the war and a number of them held government positions after the war, including representing the U.S. as ambassadors and consuls. Some contributions worth mentioning:
More materials in the Library's collection about the military service of Hungarian Americans in the Civil War can be found on this page of the guide: Military Service.
The New York Hungarian association New Yorki Magyar Egylet was formed. A few years later, in 1871 it branched into a choral society and into a Sickness Benefit Society.
Ágoston Haraszty who travelled to the U.S. earlier and wrote about his travels at that time, moved to the West coast. After he fought in the 1848 Hungarian revolution, he moved his family to California where he started several businesses, and also served as a representative in California's legislature, but became best known as the father of wine production. He imported wine grapes mostly from France, Italy, and Switzerland, and one of his sons carried on wine production after his death.
Éjszak-Amerika 1876-ban [North America in 1876] by Aurél Kecskeméthy is available online External.
The economic immigration wave started in the 1870s, when American corporations sent representatives into European countries, among them Hungary, to recruit laborers. Most of those who left their homes did so to make money that they intended to invest after returning. For this reason, at first men outnumbered women among the migrants. The U.S. economy relied on millions of immigrants to fuel its industrial growth. Once a number of Hungarians tried their luck in the new world, more and more followed in their footsteps. The highest number of people from Hungary arrived in 1907, when almost 60,000 people came. Not all of them were ethnic Hungarians, and not all of them stayed permanently. Because data on ethnic identity was not collected at the time, rather only the name of the country from which they originated was recorded, and because of circular migration, it is hard to know the exact number of Hungarians who lived in the United States in any given year. As the number of Hungarians leaving their country increased, the Hungarian government decided to discourage emigration and started introducing laws to that effect in 1881. After World War I, the U.S. changed its attitude towards immigration, and in 1924 a yearly quota of 869 was applied to Hungarian immigrants, which ended the largest wave of immigration.
During the decades of 1870-1920 Hungarian immigrants founded associations to aid newcomers, homes for orphans and for the aged, and insurance organizations for the sick. In 1910 there were 1,600 Hungarian associations registered, of which more than 1,000 were charitable and health insurance societies. Hungarian Americans also printed newspapers in Hungarian, and built many Catholic and a few Reformed parishes.
Although they came from rural areas, instead of farming they settled in mining towns and industrial cities in the northeastern and midwestern states. In the 1920 Census almost one million people reported to have had at least one parent born in Hungary, and historians assume that about half of them identified as Magyars.
The history of Hungary in the 20th century brought many changes: two world wars, the Holocaust, two revolutions, several changes of the political regime, and there were changes to Hungary's borders, and with it the size of its populations and the ethnic make-up. For these reasons, many Hungarians sought to leave the country and/or the European continent for their personal safety at various times. Given that in 1924 the U.S. government put an end to the mass influx of immigrants, many tried to qualify for refugee status. A couple of thousand refugee intellectuals in the 1930s fleeing the spread of Nazism managed to settle in the U.S. Several of them became famous in sciences, in Hollywood, music, architecture, sports, and more. Several of the people who left Hungary at that time identified as Jewish-Hungarians.
During this period, a few thousand of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who were displaced by war were able to come to the United States through the Displaced Persons Act, altogether some 17,000 DPs. The Forty-Fivers were political immigrants and represented the military and administrative elite of interwar Hungary whose skills did not transfer well to the American labor force. Politically they were a mixed group, and they spent years in refugee camps in Austria and Germany before they were able to come to the United States. While in camps they formed associations and published papers. The Forty-Seveners left Hungary when the Soviet Union forced a communist regime into power in Hungary. They received more help from the US government, and many of them found jobs in Cold War organizations, and were generally better viewed by American society. For a long time, these groups did not find a way to work together with each other, with the Hungarians who left Hungary decades before them, or with the second generation immigrants.
Following the 1956 Revolution, a group of mostly young Hungarians called the fifty-sixers were allowed to settle in the U.S. Looking to help Austria deal with a sudden humanitarian crisis, the U.S. issued 6,000 refugee visas, then President Eisenhower used his parole authority for more than 30,000 additional Hungarians. The military launched Operation Safe Haven and transported refugees by plane and ship; most arrived in New Jersey for immigration processing at Camp Kilmer. This program, that began as an improvised response to a Cold War emergency, established a precedent for evacuating and resettling refugees in the United States.
Some of the 38,000 Freedom Fighters settled in towns that had Hungarian communities, but mostly they spread out to various parts of the United States. They tended to be professionals many of whom finished their studies at American universities or went on to earn graduate and professional degrees.
In 1965 a new immigration law ended the quota system, which led to an overall increase in immigration, but the Hungarian People's Republic did not allow its citizens to leave, so few Hungarians managed to immigrate until the political regime changed in 1989.
Between 1960 and 1990 few Hungarians were able to leave their home country to move to the United States, but after 1990, when the political regimes in Eastern Europe changed, Hungarians started traveling more. Since then, a few thousand have come each year to work, study, or join family members in the United States. Hungarians from countries neighboring Hungary came to the United States as well, mostly from Transylvania, Romania, but also from Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Croatia.
Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, which made it very easy for Hungarians who want to study or work abroad to move to other countries within Europe. Coming to the United States is more difficult than immigrating to other English-speaking countries outside of the EU, as Canada and Australia have programs for admitting immigrants and helping them integrate into their societies, which the U.S. does not do at this point.
