As someone who is actively interested in genealogy, I could not fail to research my Hungarian line. But I've met some people who neglect their Hungarian lineage when they are researching because they are ashamed to admit to being even part Hungarian. To be fair, this isn't limited to Hungarian-Americans.
I've met people who dismiss their Polish line or their Slovak line.
One ex-friend of mine told me her children were "Germans," which is what she told her co-workers and employers, oh and all those people she met when she joined Young Republicans. But in fact, her children were mostly German from contributions from her side and her husband's side on their families. She was actually from German, Hungarian, and French heritage. Her husband was German and Swedish.
Now if you go back a ways, you are probably going to run into some Germans who went to other countries. Germany LET PEOPLE OUT OF GERMANY without requiring that they give up being Germans. Those who left did so because they were not in line to inherit the family farm, economic reasons, work. They settled in other countries, such as Hungary, and over generations kept to German culture. Some of them went back when Romania in recent history was not receptive to their stay.
The best reason I've ever heard for not doing your Hungarian line genealogy is that you fear it will be difficult because of the language. I'm not going to say that it isn't challenging at times, but many documents are not in Hungarian but are in Latin, or German, or another language. Avoiding genealogy because what you want isn't in English? You can get research help from experts in the United States or in Hungary. You can certainly use on-line translators...
I've met people who dismiss their Polish line or their Slovak line.
If you just want to monkey around before you commit to doing your Hungarian-American research, check out the Hungarian National Archives on line! Look through postcards, art, documents that were originally written hundreds of years ago!
