BUNNY WITH PUSSY WILLOW

We had a pussy willow tree when I was growing up in an Eastern four seasons state. It's soft furry blooms were a sign that spring was arriving. My mom always cut some branches and put them on our table. 

 

SAN FRANCISCO A HUNGARIAN AMERICAN HOT SPOT

It's been a while since I posted about Hungarian - American clubs and I'm not sure how I missed this one. Hungarian Heritage Foundation of the San Francisco Bay Area is a group so welcoming all you have to do or be is interested. They have a website that will take you to a PDF file. They are ambitious. 

hacsa.org

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What does it mean to you to have Hungarian Heritage?

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY ? LGBTQ : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #9

No, I personally have never found a genealogy worthy document that stated that a certain noble was lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning their sexuality or gender. In 2021 in America there is generally a different more accepting feeling about "gay" people.

I suspect LGBTQ people existed in Noble families. I doubt this was acknowledged in documents even if the person, the family, the village, or the church or military knew.

Why then am I making my last post in this series about Hungarian Nobility research about Medieval sex? Or 17th century sex? Or even 19th century sex?

Well, I'll tell you. There was such pressure on nobles to marry and have heirs at a time when so many children died before they could marry and reproduce, I feel that it would be damn difficult for anyone to avoid this procreation duty even if it was no fun and turned a person off. There were arranged marriage for political alliances and status and money, and power, all across Europe this matchmaking that didn't always consider a person's feelings or needs, love, companionship, attraction, I can barely wrap my mind around it. Mismatches made for misery. Nobles might have mistresses they could not marry. They had illegitimate children who could not be their heirs though there might have been ways around giving them acknowledgement, opportunities, or money. Noble men could get away from their family and spend most of their time with other men in armies, in fields, in monasteries.

As a lesbian noble lady, you might have all the luxury in the world and no companionship. Women by gender especially had such limited lives. So, few choices. They were not free to come and go.

Nevertheless, when I was reading through generational charts for Hungarian Nobility, though I know infertility existed and venereal disease existed, and men went off to war and died before they could reproduce, when I read "no issue" I wonder if that person might have avoided hetero sex. If they married, I wonder if they had a sexless marriage.

An option for some LG people was to become a priest, sister, or monastic.

Spinsters were considered to be burdens to their families, at worst, at times, witches. 

Homosexually or non-procreational sex was considered sinful and perverted.  So, you'd have to sneak, and it was dangerous to be caught. Yet, It happened. I wonder what the punishment was.

What did unmarried people do for fun? Dancing. Boys going to see the girls working in the spinning house. Flirtations in folk tradition. Songs about love with heart. You had a chance at real first love in the village with a girl you used to run and play with.

Another reason for this post is that genealogy is exposing us to and reinforcing that normalcy is about having children. After all, those of us without children are not passing on our DNA.

Today being Childless By Choice is an honorable option.

I hope that you will seek to remember those who are Never Married No Kids as well on your genealogy charts.

Interview them!

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This post is part of a series about Hungarian Nobility research. To bring up all the posts in the series, click on the tag Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY? BOOKS - RESOURCES : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #8

I want to encourage you to become familiar with current resources for your Hungarian Nobility research. Even if you hit into brick walls, even if you never have genealogy documents that prove a connection with one or more noble families, I'm sure your knowledge and understanding of a small and often forgotten country where your ancestors stood not knowing that generations later, you'd be standing on their shoulders, will be so much richer.

It is honorable of you to keep to professional standards and sometimes we do have to give up. If something is speculation, write that it is and why you're including it in your book.

But before you do, learn about the places the ancestors lived. 

What was the name of the church that they were baptized in? (It's almost never on the church records on the microfilms/database.) What was the history of that church? Do individuals or whole families change religions?

What was their profession?  Did they have estates they lost? What then did they do for work once in America?

Who are those people who stood as godparents or witnesses at marriage?

Who were the nobles that owned the land or were running the town?

I want you to explore the databases at Hungaricana.hu which are free. However, some there are linked to Arcanum.hu where some are free (public) and others require a subscription.

It can be tantalizing to find a title of interest but run into needing a subscription. After all, you don't know if the information you pay to access will be what you need. So if that happens, cross reference the title in FamilySearch. I recently found that the FamilySearch catalogue listed books on nobility by Bela Kempelen but only two, not the one I wanted, was downloadable from their website. You might also try Google Books or other free online library options.

There seems to be an attitude in Hungary (and in Poland) that archival documents are owned by, should remain the property of, and should be accessed through that country. I believe it will remain so. I understand it. Some people in those countries feel their documents were thieved.

(If you're following the Luby or Potoky families you'll be finding them in both countries.)

That means there are a lot of records available through FamilySearch, through paid for databases, and on the shelves of libraries, including The National Archives of the United States (NARA) but for Hungarian Nobility research you most likely will use those country's archives.

You may pay fees. I think they deserve them. Some people have dedicated their lives to preserving documents. 

You should see the earliest evidence of Hungary. 

I want to share with you my recent experience of spending about two days reading through lists of surnames, settlements, and bookmarking them to give a closer look at another time.

I found HUNGARICANA years ago and new photos, maps, art, books, magazines, town booklets (sometimes for tourists), as well as ancient and old documents are added continually so I check in.

I took pages on handwritten notes and bookmarked so much. But through persistence I learned one of the surnames I'm research had it's start in Lipto County because of a Magyar tribal man called Hauk Polku. His grandchildren went with four surnames: Dietrich, Luby Horanszky, and Andreanszky.****

Before you search for a surname, be sure to get it's meaning. Using the translation option from Google, you will see that Szabo is coming up as Tailor, Takács as Weaver, and Veres as Bloody.

Like the National Archives of the United States, it doesn't feel easy to uses Hungarian archives. Hungaricana does have an English interface that will take you to originals.

*****

First I want to go through some word definitions you're likely to encounter.

Just a taste.

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Kiralyi Konyvek - Royal Books

Cimertan - Heraldry

Fegyverek Kolt Sege - Coat of Arms

Birtok - Estate

Nemeseg - Nobility

Arany - Gold

Exust - Silver

Interesting accounts of one noble selling or accepting gold or silver for land from another. You may also find land disputes.

Csalad - Family (When searching try adding the word after the surname to bring up hits helpful to genealogy such as "Veres Csalad".

Lovag - Knight

Grof - Count 

Grofno - Countess

Baro - Baron

Herceg - Prince

Hercegno - Princess

Kiralyi - King

Kiralyino - Queen

Var - Castle

Varos - Town

Megye - County

Varmegye - Castle County 

Mezo - Field

Mezovaros - Field City (Overall area includes city).

The difference between a village and city is population. A "city charter" means that place has been recognized as a city by the King or Queen. Though population may be a leading factor, the sophistication of the place is also implied. A town has trade. Shops. Craftsmen. It's a place where you can buy or barter for goods. It has a church or churches. It likely has places to stay overnight for travelers.  (By our standards most of these places are small habitations.)

Orokles - Inheritance

Gyujtelmeny - Collection 

Osszesen - Total / All

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Falva - Village

Haza - Home

Felso - Upper (indicates North)

Also -  Lower (indicates South)

Nagy - Big or Greater 

Kis - Little or Small

Hegy - Mountain

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De - Of (Von in German) Used to link surname with location such as "Asztalos de Goncz" from a 1639 document. (There are many Goncz families.)

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Another collection you may want to look at is available as an online book in FamilySearch. This is another well regarded list of nobility. 

Positive is that there is an Index as well as a by-county surname list. There is also a statistical chart that is about the rank of noble, such as how many have Heraldry. I wish the Surnames were coordinated with this rank list

Titled "Nemesis Osszeiras" which suggests a total accounting of nobles surnames.

The author is Dr. Janos Illessy.

Now if you go into Hungaricana, you will find a database collection called the Illessy. This is a collection of books, some quite old, and run your surnames and locations in it because again you may be able to read online.

One surname I ran through had so many hits. Then I realized this was because the person was a 17th century Bishop in Nyitra County. (Not much chance of descendants!) 😉

*****

Chamberlain - Kamaras 

Major General -

Vezerornagy 

Soldier - Katona 

Army - Hadsereg 

Mongols - Mongolok

Turks - Torokok

Pope - Papa

Bishop - Puspok

Dean - Dekan

Priest - Pap 

Convent - Koloster 

(You may read that a grant, recognition, or decision about a person's nobility happened at a convent. Implied is a convention. If it lists the location as an actual nunnery, well, the sisters were not part of that decision.

*********

I encourage you to enjoy your adventure of discovery!

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This post is part of a series about Hungarian Nobility research. To bring up all posts in the series, click on the tab Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family.

**** There may be more surnames associated with this tribal leader.  See Ivan Nagy's work.

TULIP MARKET

 

NATIONAL CARPATHO-RUSYN CULTURAL CENTER

 National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural Center

There are a number of ways that people who lived in the Carpathian Mountains as a separate, East Slavic ethnicity are identified. Rusyn or Ruthenian, Greek Catholic, erroneously Russian. Within their ethnicity there are the Lemkos, the Boykos, and the Hutsels. A great number of Rusyn villages were and are in Hungary. Generally in the mountains of Slovakia, Belorus, and Ukraine, these people have not had a nation to call their own. Some intermarried or assimilated to the nation they found themselves living in.

The Spis area had some Rusyn habitations.

I've been checking on what's new with the people in a place called Munhall near Pittsburgh who started this organization a few years ago and learned they went National with about 1800 members. They have a number of information YouTube videos as well. If you or family members are Greek Catholic or Byzantine, and you find your surname on the list, you may share some Rusyn in your Hungarian Heritage. Listening to the short lecture by Mr. Rigatti, I learned that the Hungarian land Barons and Slovaks let the Rusyn people live their culture. Then things changed.

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY? JEWISH NOBLES : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #7

The vast majority of humans alive today were not alive during World War II or the ethnic cleansing that targeted Jews - and so many other groups of people- intellectuals, Polish Catholics - priests-called The Holocaust. 

That includes me. 

As one of the most horrible stories of the man's inhumanity to man, however, it seems the documentaries and films about this war and Naziism continue to be made. I feel this is partly because as Americans we think we won that war and, in a sense, it was a popular war that ancestors fought, and veterans were honored for. It's also because Hollywood film making has so many Jewish people working in it and they refuse to forget their people, their ancestors, and don't want anyone else to forget either. * 

There is strong participation in Jewish genealogy today. I've met a few people who never knew the family was Jewish at some point until they did their genealogy.

We can read around the subject of Jews in Hungary before and during and since the Holocaust, and there are diverse opinions as to how or why or by whom there was cooperation. When I hear Hungarians were all anti-Semites, I don't believe it. I think good people get caught in war.

I've heard stories of friendships between Jews and Christians before the invasion of Hungary as well. 

I've heard the Esterházy estates were quite favorable for Jews, about wine business in Tokaj as welcoming.

Jews were vital participants in the economy.

I believe Hollywood films serve to inform us of the WWII era, but if you think it was impossible to be Jewish and be noble in the Kingdom of Hungary, you're wrong. Imporant and influential Jewish bankers, businessmen, and industrialists, were elevated to noble status. Franz Joseph I of Austria was responsible for elevating some important and wealthy people; that would be people living in the Austrian Empire living in Hungary. According to a paper on JSTORE, 346 Jewish families were elevated to nobility in Hungary in the late 19th and early 20th century. **

Frances I of the Holy Roman Empire also elevated Jews.

Some Jewish families did way back convert to Christianity by choice (or participate in it no matter what their true feelings). Some moved into the country and kept the German-Jewish names we associate with Jewish people in America. Some changed their names to Hungarian ones, equivalent in meaning or otherwise. 

Although my personal research has not taken me in this direction, I can say there's hope in finding Jewish nobility!

Here are negatives:

I haven't found any lists of converts to Christianity in the many church microfilms or databases I've looked at. Nor have I seen Confirmations. I feel this could be telling. But maybe the scenarios I have in mind are too complicated. Maybe a person just walked into a church and talked to a priest or nun or minister.

There was a war for souls, nobles who were Evangelical (Lutheran) or Calvinist Protestant or Catholic. During fuedal times if the owner of an estate converted, so did the serfs - anyone living on that estate would want to obey or please. 

I'm hoping to find some documents through The National Archives of Hungary about conversion.

I've seen two records of non noble Jewish men in Catholic baptism of a child they begot, in one case a town pharmacist noted as "Moses" who married. In another case a Catholic woman had her child baptized and it's illegitimate. But the priest wrote in the name of a Jewish man and the word "Israel" indicating he was "father unknown." Perhaps the two were not allowed to marry. Perhaps he showed up.

I once used the library at the Simon Wiesenthal in Los Angeles and a librarian? there told me Christians and Jews did not even speak to each other in the Old Country villages in which they are known to have co-habitated and traded. I do not believe this. Separate cultures and religions yes but not even speak? And we have the play, musical, and film Fiddler on The Roof, about those maidens with modern minds of their own who want to forget the village matchmaker and marry for love, even marry a Christian man.

Let us not forget the film singer and actress Barbra Streisand made and stared in, the musical called Yentle about the Jewish daughter who learns to read when women are not taught and must immigrate to America to be free of village mentalities.

Of surnames associated with Hungarian Jewish nobility are Lukacs, Fischer, Polany, Hatvany-Duetsch, Ronai...

**William O McCagg, author. I was unable to read the whole paper since the library where I use JSTOR is closed.

*Let us not forget the Armenian Holocaust.

It can be said that Hungarians were Holocausted by invading Mongols and Turks.

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This post is part of a series about Hungarian Nobility Research  To pull up all the posts in the series, click on the tag Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY? CONNECTIONS : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #6

What if you document your genealogy to 19th century nobles who had titles? This is realizable. Are the family crests and mottos yours to use? Is it even possible that you could have grown into adulthood having never heard of these ancestors and perhaps their illustrious deeds?

Yes, it is possible. There are descendants of noble houses alive all over the world including America, many living ordinary lives. (I recently read about a Habsburg descendent who went to a Texas museum opening of a show that contained the possessions of her family.) 

Your Great Great Grandma might have gone to her wedding in a carriage right out of a Cinderella story book even though you can barely make the rent on a one bedroom apartment.

It's not for nothing that the dramatic fictive series called The Romanoffs, about modern people who feel they have connections to that Royal family, was so successful.

No, you can't use one or more Crests of families you connect to, not as an American, though you can put copies in a personal genealogy for distribution within your family which is for educational purposes. 

However, these days when a commoner such as American Meghan Markle marries into a Royal Family, as she did when she married Prince Harry, a new Coat of Arms is designed for her.

There's nothing stopping you from designing your own logo or brand.

Consider looking in books that include Heraldry from Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Croatia, really any European country as Hungarian Nobility married Nobility from those countries. 

If interested in this topic consider the heritage of Dowager Princess TNT, otherwise known as Gloria of Thurn und Taxis who was given seven names at birth. At 19 this Countess, who was waiting tables, married a much older man in Germany, an aging Prince without heirs and an estate valued somewhere between a half a billion and over two billion. Two of her unmarried children are on most eligible lists today. Her mother is Countess Beatrix Szechenyi de Sarver - Felsovidek.

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This post is part of a series about Hungarian Nobility research. To pull up the series, click on the tag Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family

GONCERUSKA COAT OF ARMS

Coat of Arms and Crest such as this one for the village of Goncruska, Abauj County, Hungary are easy to find including on Wiki and interesting in themselves. They often depict what crops or products the people were known for. They are considered to be Civic Heraldry.

You may find a number of noble families owned land in Gonc-Ruska over time including Kornis de Goncz-Ruszka. 

My personal research has taken me to the records for this town as has the 1828 census.

Heraldry, Arms, Coat of Arms, Family Crest; what do these terms refer to? The Crest itself is the image within a fancy framework. The framework is the Coat of Arms. There is an entire language of design, color, and symbols to them that varies by country and ethnic identity which is a study in itself.

Nobles used designs like these on flags, signet rings, seals, wall hangings, and so on. Today we think if them as logos for brands.
 

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY : CLUES : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #5

NOBILITY or not, here are some things to watch for.

First, the same people on various records may be noted as noble on some records and not others. It may be because noble heritage meant more to the people in a smaller settlement than a populous one, because a priest wants to honor someone as a traditional person, or because someone insisted.

Remember that a noble woman who married down kept her status, but her children didn't inherit it. She got her status because her mother married a noble. So, you might go back another generation or so to find who is the noble father.

In my personal research I have a man who stepped up to marry a pregnant noble woman who was widowed. Luckily, I descend from their second child. I have not found her first marriage or the death of that husband to know for how long she was widowed and now believe she must have moved to be nearer family in her disadvantaged state or moved to marry.

What other evidence could there be? Names. Common people tend to use and reuse common given names. They also gave their child one name. In Hungarian records I find quite a few twins. (In a Galician town now in Poland but up against the Slovak border - in a Catholic Church record I recently read - I was surprised to see not only twins but triplets and even quadruples born - this before fertility drugs! I was sure that this was so because the priest wrote in Latin that they were twins and so on. So be careful if when you see two, three, or four names you don't assume nobility. But yes, the more names a child is given at baptism the higher the nobility could be. I would say four was typical for the child of a count and countess. Currently Prince Charles (Great Britain) has only four given names but I've seen records of nobles with twelve names (not including titles) and the names usually honor relatives. Ernst August, Princess Caroline of Monaco's German House of Hanover husband, has twelve. Prince Albert II of Monaco has four. 

Into the 18th century noble women used the surname given at birth all their lives. I find it easy to follow in records because women are recorded with that maiden name at birth and marriage and often death too.

Maria Anna is two names. Marianna is one.

Be careful of online genealogy charts that list noble families and their children into the present day. First no one should be listing living people by name on genealogy charts on the internet, in databases, and so on without that living person's explicit permission. And if it's not your personal family and you don't know them to ask them what the heck are you doing? It's an invasion of their privacy and could endanger their security and peace of mind. Also these websites and charts are most often without documentation and are not genealogy. Last, they seem to not have full names going back in time. 

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To pull up the series, click on the tag, Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family

NOBILITY IN YOUR HUNGARIAN FAMILY? DOCUMENTS : GENEALOGY PRO TIP #4

What are the first indications that your ancestors were considered to be noble, besides family rumors? 

A notation in a birth, marriage, or death record.

A story: This reminds me of someone I was related to through marriage. I offered to share my research on the line I shared with her spouse and children. I knew that they had been raised with no knowledge of that line because she and her family dominated, and they had been raised to think of themselves as all Italian. 

"Oh no!" she said, waving me off. "There's no need for you to do the research. My cousin did ours all the way back to Queen Antoinette!"

Did she mean Marie Antoinette of France? (Daughter of Marie Theresa?) The "Let them eat cake" Queen who had no children who lived long enough to mate?

Perhaps she meant a noble woman named Antoinette in Southern Italy? I sensed a genealogy confabulation and couldn't help myself. I had to start researching to find their link to any Queen even if she had no interest. 

I discovered their heritage was Sephardic Jewish in Salonika, Greece, and then into Italy with significant marriages between first cousins. The move wasn't recent, so they appeared in Catholic Church records. I never did find a Queen. There was an Italian noble woman whose estate was kind and accepting to Jewish people in the town that the ancestors left in Italy but that surname didn't show up in their lines. Perhaps a story of a kind noble woman who lived on a hill seeped into their family?

Moral of the story?

Don't fake your Genealogy. 

(It's said that 40 % of Italians have Jewish roots. Watching the genealogy series Finding Your Roots, the episode on fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg's Jewish roots reminded me of this ex relative. DVF also has Salonika roots.)

So, Americans with Hungarian roots depend on the existing church records available for free at FamilySearch which are also part of the Slovak collection. Settlements appear under their Slovak names there. Although it says that Protestant and Jewish records are included, after many years I question that. The headings on columns tend to be in Latin and the handwriting language is in Latin and /or Hungarian. Or a mix - some German.

Due to a recent search for the baptism of someone who just is not coming up in Roman Catholic records I found a new resource based in Hungary. The web site is oskereso.hu and it is birth/Christening, marriage and death records collected by the Hungarian Evangelical Church, (Lutheran). I found the translation interesting. Progenitor Research. Motherly birth certificate? Scan for villages and it appears that where there's an Evangelical Church, there are records. Hidasnemeti, for instance.

I have only found notations that someone marrying a Roman Catholic was Greek Catholic or Jewish a few times in Roman Catholic records and the name appears only due to the intermarriage. Further, as I have, in microfilm days, read Jewish records and Greek Catholic records, they were separate congregations and records/ films. So maybe it's just that my research using the online database hasn't lead to even Protestant records. (Family search has a Reform Baptism Index which doesn't seem to work for me.)

However, it is true that until there were civil records, church records were where birth/ baptism, marriage and death records were kept, and I imagine everyone had to be affiliated with a congregation to be in records. Likely if you lived in the forest or way up on the mountain you might not get to church too often. 

One of my friends deep into her pre–Colonial American research tells me her grandmother's sister was born at home and no birth certificate meant difficulty in getting a driver's license. 

A noble with a private estate and entourage might not go into the village or mix with the commoners to be baptized or married or have a funeral. Unless he or she had built the church maybe. They had private chapels and visits from priests and church dignitaries. Therefore, ecclesiastical records or private estate papers in archives are needed. It's time to seek information through an archive or try Hungaricana.

Considering that nobility privilege was abolished 1848, you'll find that priests were still writing in "nemes", or "nobilis" or notes suggesting a parent is of this status after that. It does not mean they have wealth. But why then would the priest bother to write it in?

Before government funded social welfare systems, there was a strong emphasis on marriage and being ready financially to be married. Women were born into their job descriptions and prepared for the role of woman; bearing children, raising them, and being closer to home to perform household work. A woman might plant and tend a home garden and feed chickens and milk cows. Like Colonial American women, they did what we'd think of as difficult hard labor. They might participate in harvest as well. (There were women who tended farmer's market stands and peddled in towns.)

Men were in charge of supporting wives and children - the traditional work outside the home. In the 19th century the definition of a orphan was a fatherless child. It was understood a child needed a daddy.

A commoner man usually prepared to be a master craftsman or to continue in agriculture or travel for trade. While individuals, families, or communities might lend some support, such as women sharing childcare or all looking after village children, or a just married couple living in the same cottage on a farm, there was no government program to depend on. The facts of life were all around them. 

Religion and culture demanded that first came marriage to a man who could support a family, then children. Young men grew up knowing what was expected of them. A woman was taking a major risk in pregnancy without marriage. I have seen it time and time again in church records, the deaths of babies born to single mothers within months of birth. Yes, children died more quickly in general and women died in childbirth more frequently too - infection, childhood diseases - but all those little handwritten crosses on the birth records are telling. 

This is why the priest wrote in notes about the groom's professional or "condition" / finances and why godparents (and marriage witnesses) were also called "testifiers." This was a reaffirmation of support. However illegitimate children and their mothers were at a distinct disadvantage because people took care of their own first and honestly, some of these babies starved to death.

It's sometimes possible for you to discover that a woman who had a child without marriage then does marry. I always hope the father of her first child was the man she married. That it's a love story.

Why with so much understanding of the need for a husband fit for marriage and pressure to conform were women still having illegitimate children?

We can rarely know the circumstances for certain but rape by soldiers, travelers, and employers - including noble employers - and affairs with married men wasn't unheard of. Poor or unmarried women without family turned to living in as servants and some became prostitutes. People had affairs though it must have been difficult in small settlements to keep it secret. I've also seen "father in America" in notations. 

Let's say you see an illegitimate birth on a church record, the woman is a servant, and the godparents are nobility. Very likely the woman lived in their household. A noble woman may have had higher status than her common neighbors, but she wasn't ruling the roost.

It would be wrong of me not to mention the plight of some of our female ancestors and relatives and the fact that a DNA test might link you to nobility rather than a trail of documents.

Now, another possible way to suspect wealth and / or nobility is when the couple getting married are younger than the usual craftsman apprentice. Nobles sometimes arranged marriage at a distance and sent along a 13- or 14-year-old bride to be raised in her mother in law's household. The groom could be as young, a couple years older, or a much older widowed noble. In 19th century records I've seen 15- and 16-year-old noble brides. Why besides allegiances, fertility, and presumed health?

Because there is money enough to support the family without having to become an apprentice or worker. (Don't be too shocked to see daughters of immigrants to America also marrying that young. There was no time for teenagerhood or extended immaturity. 

That said, you will find there are plenty of impoverished "landless gentry" who had to work. Many went to cities to take government jobs.

If you do find nobility of the higher estate owning type in your heritage, be open to the possibility of linking to a great many other nobles! And to evidence of more travel and movement. The girl next door or the next village is for people who don't get too far from home.

Cherish notes and translate them!

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This post is part of a series on Hungarian Nobility research.  To pull up the series click on the tag Pro Tips - Hungarian Nobility in the Family

TODAYS' FEAST - PIROGIE

Original Photo 

C 2021

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I hadn't made these in years, but I had a quarter pound of hard goat cheese, mashed potato, onion, parsley, kale, kraut, butter, and a five pound sack of all purpose white flour.

It took a lot longer than I thought it would. I made a potato, cheese, and fried onion filling the day before- easily an hour. I squeezed out the juice from the kraut and added chopped onion and kale today; I made half from each filling mixture. I rolled the dough about 1/16th of an inch thick, which is not so thin as to be transparent. I ended up making a second batch of dough.

Here is the simple dough recipe.

4 cups white flour

2 cups warm water

2 tablespoons butter

1 egg

Make a well in the pile of flour, break the egg and let the egg drop into the well. Put in your butter.

Add half the water at once, the rest gradually. Knead together well - roll and let rest a half hour.

You can add a little water more to get to the nice texture.

Fill with whatever you would like, however, be sure whatever you spoon in has a more dry rather than wet, creamy, or soggy consistency.

Once sealed by fingerwork or fork, drop into rapidly boiling water. Dumpling will rise to top. Allow to boil at top about 3 minutes. Raise out of the boiling pot with a slotted or wire spoon to drain. Place on plate but don't let the dumplings sit in water. 

Immediately fry or cook in butter or when cool and not sticky, store in refrigerator. Can be frozen. 

TULIPS - SPRING