Béla and Krisztina’s 100th Anniversary

Hungary was in turmoil in 1920. In the aftermath of WWI the country was occupied by the Romanians and then by the Russian Communists. The Treaty of Trianon, the agreement that the Hungarians would be forced to sign that summer would give away half their land and 2/3 of the Hungarian people would be living outside her borders. The future was uncertain.

Béla & Krisztina, 1 June 1920

But it was springtime in Budapest. Amid the post-war rubble there were flower vendors on street corners and outdoor tables at the cafes. Life went on. And on Akácfa utca (Acacia Tree Street) romance was in the air. 29 year old Béla András Édes was recently widowed. Along with his partner he owned a growing typewriter sales and service business at #13. Across the street at #12 was the Három Huszár Vendéglő (The Three Hussars Restaurant). The restaurant manager was Krisztina Kancsal, a blue-eyed 26 year old from a town in western Hungary. The oldest of 10 children, she was used to taking charge and didn’t suffer fools lightly.

The Balaton Étterem in 1970s took over the location of The Három Hussár restaurant

Béla was born on February 28, 1891in the city of Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) in the Transylvania region of eastern Hungary. He was the third of six children of Zsigmond Édes and Anna Terk. When he was twelve his father died of pneumonia, leaving Anna a widow with six children from three to seventeen years old. In the next year the family moved to Budapest where his parents had lived years earlier. A few years later Béla and his older brothers worked for a while in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1911 twenty year old Béla was employed there as a locksmith but in 1915 he was back living in Budapest when his sister Anna died of TB at only 17.

Around this time Béla had been married with two daughters but his wife and children all died of illness. I have not yet found any record of any of them and don’t know their names. Béla’s mother, Anna Terk, died in November 1919 followed by the death of his favorite brother Imre, a ship’s captain, in May 1920. Perhaps the loss of so many family members encouraged Béla to get married again sooner rather than later.

Desk calendar from the firm of Édes and Decsy 1949

Krisztina was born February 21, 1894 in Hahót in Zala county near the Austrian border. She was the first child of blacksmith István Kancsal and his wife Teréz Vörös. In the following years two brothers were born; Gyula and István. Then a sister Irén was born but died in infancy. In 1903 their mother Teréz died when Krisztina was nine years old. With three young children István couldn’t wait long for a new wife. Less than four months later he married Julia Lazár.  Julia bore him six children over the next 15 years. Krisztina would have had lots of chores helping out with such a large family.

Her brother István moved to Budapest when he was about 16. The family story was that their stepmother Julia told him to leave. With all those young children of her own to feed she apparently did not want to continue to feed an always hungry teenage boy. We don’t know when Krisztina moved there but it was likely that she was there for several years before she became the restaurant manager at the Három Huszár. Meanwhile István worked for Béla as a mechanic before starting his own business. Béla was kind and generous to Krisztina’s family and they respected him. Both István and a younger sister Karolin chose him to witness their weddings, and István named a son after Béla.

The Budapest Civil Registry shows that Krisztina and Béla married on Tuesday, June 1, 1920. Witnesses were Béla’s partner, Kalman Decsy, and Krisztina’s boss, Lajos Grill. It was traditional for weddings to be held in the home town of the bride’s family. But Krisztina’s life was now in Budapest and she did not seem to have a close relationship to her step-mother. The record doesn’t say where the wedding took place but as they were both Roman Catholic it was likely at their church. Don’t you think that there was a fun party that night at the Három Huszár with great food, music and dancing?

A year after their wedding their only child was born, my father Endre. Béla and Kalman’s business continued to grow. Endre excelled in school and became a doctor during World War II. After the war the political situation became intolerable. Endre refused to join the communist party that occupied Hungary. He escaped the country and immigrated to Canada in 1948 where he married my mother and pursued a career in medicine. After the 1956 Hungarian Uprising Béla and Krisztina left their once prosperous lives in Budapest and joined our family in Canada. When our family moved to the United States in 1963, they stayed on in Saskatchewan.

Béla and Krisztina’s 50th Anniversary, June 1970 – Prince Albert, SK, Canada

In 1970 our family drove from Arizona, where we were then living, to Béla and Krisztina’s home for a family celebration of their 50^th wedding anniversary. Now, 50 years later, I would encourage you to raise a toast to the romance that a century ago led to the start of our family.

Rozsa Dobokay , an Educated Woman

My great-grandmother Rozsa Dobokay was born on September 4, 1857 in the city of Brassó (now Brasov, Romania) the only child of Zoltan Tamás and his wife Heidi.  Rozsa was baptized in the Hungarian Reformed Church.

At that time Brassó was on the eastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary with the Kingdom of Romania. Zoltan worked there as a customs agent. Heidi was the daughter of a professor of German. At a time when most of the population was engaged in farming, the Dobokay family was more educated than most.

Portrait of a Woman in Lilac by Szinyei Merse Pal 1874

Rozsa was fluent in French and German and made her living as a governess. The family story is that she taught the children of a Transylvanian baron. Perhaps it was on the baron’s estate that she met György Orbán, a widower with a 2 year-old daughter, Ilona.

It seems like an unlikely match. She was protestant. He was Catholic. She came from an educated family. He worked as a groundskeeper and shoemaker. Perhaps Rozsa liked little Ilona and was ready to leave her position and start her own family. She was older than the usual marriageable age and given the sentiment of the times other marriage offers were perhaps not likely.

Most likely they were married in 1892 but we don’t know where the wedding took place. Rozsa was 35 and György was 32. Their only child together was my grandfather Balázs who was born on June 9, 1893 in Etéd. She and Gyorgy would have been very proud to have a son.

Gyorgy died in 1916 at the age of 55. Rozsa lived another decade as a widow in Etéd.

In 1923 Balázs married Erzsébet Nagy. According to family stories, Rozsa was a bit of a snob and refused to meet Balázs’ wife Erzsébet Nagy whom she considered to be a peasant. We don’t know if she ever met her granddaughters.

Balázs and Erzsébet had their first daughter, Elizabeth in November 1923. Their second child, another girl, Ibolya (Violet) was born 2 years later. When the baby was only 6 months old Balázs left for Canada in August 1926. Rozsa died of pneumonia a month later. She was 69 years old.

We have no photograph of Rozsa but this painting by a Hungarian artist of the time evokes the dress and the setting of her life as a governess.

 

Then and Now: The Killer Lake

The Killer Lake, Gyilkostó in Hungarian, is high in the Hargita Mountains in the Székely region of eastern Transylvania. The name in Romanian is Lacul Roșu, or Red Lake. The ‘red’ color comes from the sediment of the Red Creek that feeds the lake, although it really is more of a murky brown. Of course the ‘bloody’ color is also the origin of the more creative Hungarian name.

A massive landslide in the 19th century caused the entire mountain side of trees land in the lake upside down. The tree stumps are easier to see in this picture of my parents in 1983. 31 years later the stumps are disappearing. I’m glad we got there before they were all gone.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my parents. They looked very happy. Dad was very hip in those flared leg pants and sideburns. It was Dad’s first time back to Hungary since he escaped in 1948, and Mom’s first time visiting her parents’ homeland.

We were happy too. We spent the day driving the crazy mountain roads with my dear cousin and her amusing husband. And this picture is one of my favorites from the trip.

Then and Now: Székelykerestúr

My great-grandparents Tivadar Nagy and Borbala Both shown in front of their home in Székelykerestúr sometime in the 1960s. The woman standing is Tivadar’s niece.

This page from my parents photo album from 1983 showed that the place was showing its age.

Csíkkarcfalva, great-grandmother’s hometown

There are many little Hungarian villages tucked away in the Hargita Mountains in the Székely region of Transylvania. My mother’s family is from there. Relatives still live there, including some that Mother never talked about. Perhaps she didn’t know them either. My great-grandmother Borbála Both was born in 1883 in the village of Csíkkarcfalva ( Cârța in Romanian).  A century later my parents travelled there for the first time. This summer my husband and I visited the village with my cousin and her husband as tour guides.

Csíkkarcfalva Church 1983For centuries the village market took place at the foot of the hill in the center of town below the fortified church.

The 15th century fortified church occupies the top of the hill in the center of town. For centuries the town market took place in the main street below.

In my parent’s photo from 1983 a soviet style flat-bed truck raises dust clouds as it rumbles through town. Now the roads are paved. My cousin told me about a local politician who was able to direct infrastructure improvement funds to the village for that purpose.

Great-grandpa’s house in Kolozsvár !

This is the address where my great-grandparents lived in Kolozsvár, Hungary when my grandpa was born. Today the city is called Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

 

Some of the buildings on the street are run-down but this looks better and it has some nice details. It has lace curtains in the windows and a bit of a garden in the back. I bet great-grandmother would have loved that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greatⁿ-Grandma Katalin, Hajdú Warrior

Kerekes Katalin is hands down my favorite ancestor. Our lineage gets a little fuzzy in the 17th century so I’m not sure how many ‘greats’ apply. In the early 1600s Katalin was fighting by the side of her warrior husband, Édes Gergely, and his brothers. She received nobility in her own name because of her valor. This was no small accomplishment at a time when women were considered less than human. She was “a big strong armed woman who fought like an animal’ according to the patent of nobility. Her husband’s family was from Székelyföld. No word about her dad, but Katalin’s mother was a hajdú.

The hajdúk (plural for hajdú) had been peasant cattle drovers on the puszta, the eastern plains of Hungary. Driving herds of the big grey long-horned ‘Magyar szürkemarha‘ to market, they had to become fierce fighters to defend themselves on the vast treeless plains.

Béla’s Hometown – Growing up in Kolozsvár

Béla Édes, my grandfather, was 6 years old in 1897 when this map of Kolozsvár was published. His family lived on Nagy utca, shown by the red line drawn on the map.

You may notice the tracks along the street for the villamos (tram) that would have taken the family to the city center (now Unirii Square).

Kolozsvár villamos

Kolozsvár is located in a wide valley on the bank of the Szamos river. It was described as “a pleasant, clean-looking town, with wide streets diverging from the principal Platz, in which is the Gothic Cathedral of St. Micheal” ¹. Szent Mihály templom, as it is known in Hungarian, is at #17 on the map. The imposing cathedral was begun by King Sigismund in 1401 and named for the Archangel Michael, the patron saint of the city. Béla’s Catholic family would have gone there for mass on Sundays, then probably home for a big Sunday meal.

The Story of the Origins of the Édes family

Fighting nobles, religious conflicts, deceit, treachery and shifting allegiances were all part of the landscape in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 17^th century. Add in the story of a fearless Hajdu woman who fought at the side of her family, and you have the history of the origins of the Édes family.

Among Belá Édes’s documents are copies of the ‘Incunabulum’ the history of the family.  István Édes documented the oral history as told by his father in the 17^th century. He then hid the document in the lining of a book where it was discovered in the mid 1800s.

The Szekely Land in Winter (Székelyföld télen)

My great-grandmother, a shyly smiling little woman in a black babushka summer or winter, was Both Bórbala (in English Barbara Both).   She was born in Csíkkarcfalva, Erdély, Hungary in 1883. In 1921, after Trianon, it became part of Romania and was renamed Cârţa.

It is a little village high in the Hargita Mountains of Transylvania where the winters are long and harsh. It lies up the road about 20km from Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc) where Hockey is a religion.