HOW GENEALOGY RESEARCH INFORMED MY SENSE OF HUNGARIAN IDENTITY

Although I knew from an early age that my heritage was Hungarian and that was different than say, Irish or English, or Italian or Native American, as a grade school student I didn't know exactly what it meant. 

As an adult I heard a story retold about my father being unmercifully teased in ways that other children intended to hurt his self esteem with name calling and so on when he was a child.  He came home crying.  The story goes that my grandfather told my father "No one here is original but for the American Indian."

But my dad never said much about being of Hungarian ethnic heritage or what that meant for his father or himself growing up or as an adult.  He didn't seem ashamed nor did he seem proud.

These days DNA research is expanding our consciousness about pre-historic movement of populations and, it could be argued, is proving to us that ethnic identity is a fairly recent aspect of human life on this planet.  I enjoy being in a more multicultural environment where it is easy to learn a bit about other people's ethnic customs and cultures, even if in the United States what outlasts the way people built homes or wore clothes or spoke in another language, is ethnic cooking.  I have to say that I have never experienced it that anyone from these other cultures was interested in my ethnicity or heritage.

When I began genealogy research I didn't realize what finding a person's baptismal records in a small town church record would lead me to.  It wasn't enough for me to have the record or even link it to siblings, parents, grandparents, great grandparents.  I wanted to put these people into as accurate a socio-cultural context as I could, so I started reading around the subject,  and my research took me to archives and even the library of one of the biggest art institutions in the U.S.

When I began genealogy research I began to meet some people who were like minded in their quest for information about their own families, and more apt to not only share research tactics but listen to me when I talked my family - or bragged!

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Today I think I have a good understanding of the Hungarians.  As I write and post this blog my understanding deepens.