THE
HUNGARIAN
TEXANS
James Patrick McGuire
THE
HUNGARIAN
TEXANS
James Patrick McGuire
The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
1993
THE TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS
A series dealing with the many peoples who have contributed to the history
and heritage of Texas. Now in print:
Pamphlets- The Afro-American Texans, The Anglo-American Texans, The
Belgian Texans, The Chinese Texans, The Czech Texans, The
French Texans, The German Texans, The Greek Texans, The
Indian Texans, The Italian Texans, The Jewish Texans, The
Lebanese Texans and the Syrian Texans, The Mexican Texans,
Los Tejanos Mexicanos (in Spanish), The Norwegian Texans, The
Spanish Texans, and The Swiss Texans.
Books- The Danish Texans, The English Texans, The German Texans,
The Hungarian Texans, The Irish Texans, The Japanese Texans,
The Polish Texans, The Swedish Texans, and The Wendish Texans.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGuire, James Pauick.
The Hungarian Texans / James Patrick McGuire. - 1st ed.
p. cm. - (Texians and the Texans)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-86701-041-X. - ISBN 0-86701 -048-7 (softbound)
1. Hungarian Americans - Texas. I. Title. II. Series.
F395.H95M37 1991
976 .4'00494511- dc20 91-43 628
elP
The Hungarian Texans
by James Patrick McGuire
Copyright ©1993
The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
PO. Box 1226, San Antonio, Texas 78294
Rex Ball, Executive Director
David P Haynes, Director of Production
Production Staff: Sandra Hodsdon Carr, Jim Cosgrove,
Lynn Weiss; Alice Sackett, indexer
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-43628
International Standard Book Numbers
Hardbound 0-86701-041-X
Softbound 0-86701-048-7
First Edition
This project was made possible in part by grants from the
San Antonio Hungarian Association, Michael Balint, the
Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation, the Franz Liszt Foundation
of Texas, the Hungarian Foundation of Texas, the Texas
Committee on the Humanities, Houghton Mifflin, and
the Houston Endowment, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER ONE Hungary and Texas
CHAPTER TWO Early Hungarians in Texas
CHAPTER THREE Laszl6 Ujhazi, the Great Exile
CHAPTER FOUR Ujhazi's Family in Texas after 1870
CHAPTER FIVE Hungarian 48ers in Bexar County, Texas
CHAPTER SIX Other 48ers in Texas
Xl
1
11
35
79
111
135
CHAPTER SEVEN The Great Economic Immigration , 1880-1914 169
CHAPTER EIGHT Post-World War II Immigrants in Texas 227
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 257
NOTES 261
BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
PHOTO CREDITS 303
INDEX 307
FOREWORD
This study of the history of Hungarians in Texas was begun during
the summer of 1985 at the Institute of Texan Cultures. No
previous attempt had been made to write a history of the Hun­garians
in Texas prior to that date . Identifying individual Hungarian
pioneers involved combing through community, church, county, city,
and Texas histories as well as the existing body of Hungarian Americana
in both English and Hungarian. Further, word-of-mouth identification
of previously unknown individuals in our history proved helpful. All
areas of the state of Texas were searched for the Hungarians.
Problems encountered in Hungarian source materials were
solved with the assistance of Hungarian readers knowledgeable in both
languages . Names, often distorted by census takers, presented special
problems. In cases where descendants assisted us, we accepted the cur­rent,
if anglicized, spelling of family names and, often , the nonuse
of diacritics. Spelling variants which appeared in the data are given ,
as well as nicknames and anglicized given names. The overall result
may appear uneven, since we also attempted to use proper Hungarian
given and surname spellings and diacritics as accurately as possible.
Places in the old Kingdom of Hungary were given their actual
Hungarian names rather than the Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, Polish,
Serbian, Croatian, Rumanian, or German versions of their names. Many
xi
of Texas' Hungarians were born and lived in areas which are today part
of Hungary's neighboring states.
The Hungarian research files at the Institute of Texan Cultures
are available to scholars and the public. We hope that additional in­formation
will be added in the future as more data becomes available
or is discovered in dusty attics and archives. Photograph negatives of
historical Hungarian pioneers and their Texas descendants are also
maintained for future use .
Xli
CHAPTER ONE
Hungary and Texas
Bon voyage, you horsemen!
Bon voyage, you hero!
You noble lady! In the New WOrld
Be granted to you, you mourners and maiden,
Freedom, home, happiness, and peace.
With this poem Hermann Seele, a German immigrant, com­memorated
the arrival of Laszlo Ujhazi, the most note­wonhy
exile of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849,
and his sons and daughter as they passed through New Braunfels on
their way to a new home near San Antonio in September 1853. As
Hungary's first political refugees reached Texas, Seele saluted them as
the heroes of a valiant nation, defeated in their quest for freedom and
forced to seek haven on America's Texas frontier. Although preceded
by a few Hungarian adventurers, travelers, and settlers, the arrival
during the 1850's of a score or more of political emigres fleeing the
failed revolution marked the real beginning of Hungarian immigration
to Texas. l
Hungary is a small Central European country of almost 36,000
square miles and a population of about 11 million. By contrast, Texas
covers a land mass of 266,807 square miles and has more than 17 million
citizens. Few Texans know that the Treaty of Trianon, which ended
World War I for Hungary in 1920, awarded more than two-thirds of
the ancient kingdom, or 89,700 square miles, to her neighboring states:
Austria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia. Sixty-four percent
of her population, including more than 3.5 million Magyars and most
of her national minorities of Slovaks, Serbs, Germans, Ruthenians,
1
...... " .. s
FA:PMID DOMINION
~
<r MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Europe and the Byzantine Empire, c. 1000
KINGDOM OF '"
THE VOLGA BULGARS
I
,
MORDVINIANS
r
,
/ -
,I I....r",,r\..­,
r _) CUMANS
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DOMINION
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SYRIA
Croats, Slovenians, Rumanians, and others, were also lost. What re­mained
was a nearly homogenous core of Magyars in what was called
Inner Hungary in historic times. 2
Hungary lies in the Carpathian Basin, surrounded on the west,
north, and east by a wall of mountains of the same name. Bisected
from north to south by the mighty middle Danube River, eastern and
southern Hungary is largely a stepped plain. Mountainous Transylvania
(Erdely in Hungarian), now part of Rumania, lies still farther eastward
in the Carpathian Mountains. West of the Danube, hilly country reaches
toward the Alps. This Trans-Danubian district contains the country's
largest lake, Balaton. Into this mountain-protected basin marched the
Magyar tribes, ancestors of the Hungarian nation, in A.D . 896.
Who are the Magyars, and where did they come from? Little
is known of their origin. They speak a Finno-Ugric language, part of
the larger Ural-Altaic family of languages. Only Finnish, Estonian, and
a few minor languages are related to Hungarian. Coming originally
from the region of the middle Ural Mountains, the ancient tribes mi-
2
grated westward from their forested homeland onto the steppes of what
is now southern Russia, where they came into contact with Turkish
peoples. Leading the lives of nomadic herdsmen, the Magyar tribes
were gradually forced westward by fiercer neighbors in the fifth century.
By the early ninth century seven hordes, or tribes, lived along the right
bank of the lower Don River. There they were joined by three hordes
of Turkish Khazars, the Kabars. J
Under pressure from superior forces from Central Asia, these
nomadic tribes moved westward in 889 under the leadership of Arpad,
a Magyar chieftain. They crossed the passes of the Carpathians in 895-
896 and took possession of the Carpathian Basin from the weaker Slavs
and Avars. The Sz€kelys, another tribe already present, submitted and
were assigned to guard the Carpathian passes in what became known
as Transylvania. By 907 the conquest was complete, each tribe was al­lotted
its own area of the conquered territory, and the house of Arpad
ruled Hungary for the next four centuries .4
Christianity arrived from the west. G€za, the great-grandson
of Arpad, received Christian baptism from Byzantine priests from Con­stantinople,
and his son, Stephen, the "best-loved, most famous, and
perhaps the most important figure" in Hungary's history, opted for
Roman Catholicism and became Hungary's first Christian king. He
converted his people, built churches, and laid the foundation for a
feudal state. Stephen was canonized in 1087.5
In 1222 the Golden Bull, Hungary's Magna Carta, chartered
national liberties and established Hungarian constitutionalism. But
disaster struck the kingdom in 1241 when the Mongols (Tartars) under
Batu Khan swept through the Carpathian passes and ravaged the land
and its population for a year. With the death of the last Arpad king
in 1301, the throne passed to foreign monarchs, who ruled until Aus­tria's
Habsburg dynasty came to power in the 16th century.6
Hungary faced a second, more lasting disaster brought on by
the decline of royal power. An unsuccessful peasant revolt in 1514 paved
the way for serfdom. As a result, Hungary was severely weakened when
faced with aggression from the Ottoman Turks from the Balkans. In
1526 the Hungarian national army was defeated at the battle of Mohacs
and the king killed. For the next century and a half, the Ottomans
ruled southern and central Hungary, while Austria dominated the
northern and western fringes of the country. In the east Transylvania
became an autonomous state subject to the Turks. 7
3
Liberated from the Turks in 1699, reunited Hungary was ruled
by Austria's Habsburgs until 1918. Although monarchs periodically
sought to impose centralized rule over their polyglot empire, Hungary's
nobility preserved ancient constitutional traditions and rights which
each king swore to uphold at his coronation in Hungary. Austria was
forced to compromise with those rights throughout much of its rule,
and it was from the ranks of the nobility that Hungarian nationalist
leaders emerged early in the 19th century to lead a linguistic, cultutal,
and national revival. 8
With the meeting of the 1825 Hungarian Diet, the economically
and socially underdeveloped country experienced "a powerful moderniz­ing
movement" similar to that which began earlier in Western Europe.
Aimed at removing the ancient privileges of the nobility, improving
life for the peasants, and gaining national freedom, this revival became
known as Hungary's Age of Reform, 1825-1848. It culminated in the
Revolution of 1848-1849 against Habsburg autocracy. Although some
wished to retain traditional ties to the Crown, many of the lesser no­bility,
led by Lajos (Louis) Kossuth, demanded liberal social and eco­nomic
reforms and favored radical changes in the political link to the
Habsburg king which would lead to national independence.9
Kossuth, a young lawyer, became leader of the opposition in
the Hungarian Diet in 1847 . He called for a genuine, responsible
national Hungarian government; an enlarged franchise on the local
and national scene to include non-nobles; taxation of nobles as well
as commoners; abolition of the remnants of feudal dues and serfdom
(without compensation to the landlords); the equality of everyone under
the law and of all recognized religions; freedom of the press and of
assembly; and union with Transylvania. However, no concessions were
offered by this Magyar national movement to the kingdom's minorities,
especially the Croats and the Serbs. In spite of stiff minority resistance,
Magyar was made the official language of public life and education. 10
Hungary's inability to solve its minority problems, combined
with goals for modernizing the nation, brought on armed conflict. The
Revolution of 1848, which began in France, spread to Austria. Austrian
Chancellor Metternich was deposed in Vienna, and crowned heads else­where
fruitlessly sought to turn back the clock. In Hungary the Diet
pressed its demands on the king, who appointed a government and
a provisional prime minister in March 1848. The king also accepted
the reform package, which became known as the April Laws. Thus
4
Hungary became a constitutional monarchy under its Habsburg king,
and Kossuth joined the new government as minister of finance.
Events moved rapidly during the spring of 1848. Croatia, backed
by Austria, rebelled against Hungary, which in turn set up its own
national army (Honved, or National Guard). When Croatia invaded
Hungary in September 1848 and mediation failed, martial law was
declared by the king, and the Hungarian ministry resigned. Kossuth
then became head of the Hungarian committee of public safety for
national defense. In December the new Austrian tuler, FranzJoseph,
embarked upon a vigorous program of uniting all lands and peoples
of the empire into one great centralized state, but the Hungarians
declared that policy illegal and resisted.
The war of independence lasted until August 1849. Hungary's
new armies were initially successful in the north and in Transylvania,
but Austrian and Croatian forces captured Buda in January 1849. The
Hungarian government fled east to Debrecen, where on April 14 the
Diet declared the throne vacant and Hungary an independent country
with Kossuth as governor. Czarist Russia then came to the aid of Austria.
Hungarian forces were driven into the southeastern pan of the country
and overwhelmed at Temesvar on August 8, 1849. Kossuth and his
followers fled into exile. On August 13 Hungary surrendered at
Vilagos - the sttuggle for national independence was over.
Many who had participated in the revolution chose exile in
Europe and America. Others were not as lucky. Hundreds were exe­cuted,
including the prerevolution prime minister, 13 generals (at
Arad), and many other military and political figures. Austria abrogated
aU of Hungary's national institutions, set up a provisional administration
which separated Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia, and divided Hun­gary
into five administrative districts. A non-Hungarian bureaucracy
and police force were created, minorities and their languages were
declared equal, and German became the language of administration.
Taxes were raised. But the repressive and centralist policies united the
Hungarian nation in passive resistance. Although many of these policies
were modified during the 1850's, a solution was not reached until the
Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. 11
Hungary's great statesman Ferenc Deik and Austrian Emperor
Franz Joseph reached an agreement whereby Hungary regained her
constitutional integrity under Austro-Hungary, the new dual monarchy.
Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary with the Hungarian regalia
5
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914
in Buda, and a new Hungarian government controlled everything except
foreign, fiscal, and military affairs, which were shared with Austria in
the new system. Transylvania was reunited with Hungary and a Croatian
settlement reached. In the new Hungarian constitutional monarchy,
"a great economic and cultural development started," leading to a half
century of "peace, progress, and prosperity." 12
Hungary celebrated its millennium in 1896 with great fanfare.
In the capital, Budapest (Buda, Pest, and Obuda had amalgamated
in 1873), the Parliament building and the Royal Palace faced each other
across the Danube. Transportation, capital, industry, and modern agri­culture
saw vast improvement during the last decades of the century.
But a rapid population increase (19,250,000 in 1900) coupled with
uneven social and economic conditions among the people contributed
to large-scale emigration to America by the lower classes, who sought
economic opportunity unavailable within the country. Industrial work­ers,
small farmers, craftsmen and businessmen, and others joined this
migration to the United States and to Texas. 13
6
The outbreak of war in 1914 brought an end to emigration from
Hungary. With the defeat of Germany and Austfo-Hungary in 1918,
Hungary faced an uncertain future. The Treaty of Trianon dealt a
serious and traumatic blow, removing two-thirds of Hungary's territory
and more than half its population. Following a brief period of Bolshevik
revolution and counterrevolution, an independent Hungary emerged
as a constitutional monarchy governed by a regent in conjunction with
Parliament. War reparations and the Great Depression of the 1930's
further impoverished the truncated nation. As a result, Hungary was
drawn into World War II on the side of the Axis, hoping thereby to
regain lost territories from her neighbors.
The defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 doomed Hungary to
military occupation by the Soviet Union. New immigrants- refugees
and exiles, who were called Displaced Persons-arrived in the United
States and Texas during the late 1940's and early 1950's, infusing their
numbers into this country's century-old Hungarian community. Some
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Historic Hungary and present-day Hungary as reduced by the Treaty
a/Trianon, 1920
7
of Hungary's brightest and most talented people began new lives in
Texas' universities, laboratories, and industries. Still other political
emigres arrived in the months following the uprising of 1956 in
Hungary. Thus, in the period bounded by the Revolution of 1848-1849
and the uprising against Russian occupation in 1956, scores and then
thousands of political exiles found homes in Texas. Their numbers were
strengthened greatly by many others who left Hungary in search of
a better life. During that century the Hungarians joined emigrants
from many nations in populating Texas , a state rapidly emerging into
the modern age.
Texas welcomed the immigrants. The geographic area that had
become Texas first emerged from prehistory as a remote border province
of New Spain (1519-1821) and, later, of the Republic of Mexico (1821-
1836). As Hungary began her Age of Reform in the 1820's, the first
significant numbers of immigrants entered Texas from the United States
to claim bountiful, fertile, cheap land for the cultivation of cotton.
Stephen F. Austin and others promoted colonization under liberal
Mexican laws which welcomed the newcomers. Europeans - individuals
or families- joined the Anglo-Americans who came after 1821, and
a few German and French colonies were successfully founded during
the 1840's and 1850's.
By the mid-1830's political events within Mexico-principally
a power struggle between those who favored centralized versus federated
government-led to the Texas Revolution of 1836 wherein the victorious
Texans gained sovereignty. The Republic of Texas (1836-1845) also
welcomed newcomers to civilize its vast territory, much of which re­mained
beyond the western frontier for another four decades.
Annexed in 1845 as the 28th state, Texas' story became part
of the history of the United States. As the frontier slowly receded, emi­grants
from many other states and from Europe continued to settle
in the Lone Star State. Its agricultural base was supplemented by the
growth of the cattle kingdom within its western boundaries. By 1890
the frontier closed, and railroads reached across the land. Still an agri­cultural
producer by the turn of the century, Texas faced a period of
rapid industrial development with the discovery of oil at Spindletop
in 1901, followed by two world wars. Fed by seemingly limitless natural
resources in the state coupled with the labor of its increasing population,
Texas welcomed immigrants, who became part of the ethnic mosaic
of its people.
8
CZECH
REPUBLIC
[CZECHOSLOVAKIA]
_ SZENTENDRE
- BUDAPEST
SLOVAK
REPUBLIC
- EGER
HUNGARY
TALIA~_6RO~KONY MOUNTAINS_
/_&LAKE BALATON KECSKEMET
KESZTHELY
[YUGOSLAVIA)
BOSNIA
RUMANIA
Hungary, 1993
Until the advent of the great economic migration in the 1880's,
the story of Texas' Hungarian pioneers can be told in terms of indi­viduals.
Then, with the pre-World War I arrival of hundreds seeking
prosperity, and later, with a second and larger wave of political refugees
after World War II, Texas' Hungarian minority rapidly expanded. The
history of Hungarians in Texas then broadened to include settlement
patterns and the role of non-Magyar minority peoples from the ancient
Hungarian kingdom who joined the migration. Hungarian community
efforts became viable only after 1945 in larger cities where, for the first
time, sufficient numbers permitted the formation of heritage preserva­tion
associations. Only then did the Hungarians become a visible minor­ity
within the state's population.
The stories which follow are representative of the collective expe­riences
of all immigrants who bravely faced the future in the American
Southwest. Their participation in economic, social, and political life
reflected that of all who helped civilize Texas' vast land in less than
two centuries. When Hungary celebrated its millennium in 1896, Texas
9
was still a young, sparsely populated state. Its potential for opportunity
and advancement was shared by Hungary's political exiles and other
immigrants who joined in their quest for freedom and economic se­curity.
Hermann Seele's wish for "freedom, home, happiness, and
peace" in 1853 expressed Texas' promise for these people .
10
CHAPTER TWO
"To the Other Side of the World"
Early Hungarians in Texas
K lara Djhazy Kellerschbn, probably the first Hungarian woman
in Texas, wrote in her diary on October 8, 1860, that her
father, Laszlo Djhazi, "constantly has an urge to go, either
to the prairie or to the other side of the world." She saw in her father
the wanderlust of many Europeans of her time, including Hungarians,
who wished to explore new vistas. Although it was generally considered
that Hungarians did not have any significant part in the geographical
discoveries and explorations of the 15th to the 19th centuries, the first
Hungarian in America may have been a man called Tyrker (Turk), who
accompanied Eric the Red about A.D. 1000. He was followed by a
Stephen Parmenius of Buda, who visited Newfoundland in 1583 .1
During the next two centuries a few Hungarian missionaries
worked in the English and Spanish colonies in North America, and
others published their travel experiences on this continent. A few Hun­garians
fought for American freedom in the Revolution, including
Colonel Michael Kovats and Major John Ladislaus Pollereczky. Later,
information on post-Revolutionary America and its liberal, democratic
political institutions reached and influenced Hungarians through trans­lated
histories and travelogues during the 1830's and 1840's, coinciding
with Hungary's own Age of Reform. Scientific and cultural exchanges
were also initiated at this time between the two countries. But, as far
11
George Fisher
as is known, none of these early adventurers, travelers, missionaries,
and soldiers reached Texas. 2
George Fisher was Texas' first Hungarian adventurer. When he
died in San Francisco in 1873 at the age of 78, he had experienced
a life filled with high adventure and accomplishment. A citizen of four
countries (Hungary, the United States, Mexico, and Texas) and the
husband of an equal number of wives, he had participated in important
political events that led to Texas' rebellion against Mexico and the
establishment of the new Republic of Texas.
Fisher's early life was obscure. He was said to have been born
of Slovene (or Serbian) parents named Ribar (some sources say the
family name was Sagic) in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, on April 30, 1795.
Following the early death of his father, Fisher was placed under the
care of Archbishop Stephen Stratimirovich of the Orthodox Church
and was sent to the College of Carlowitz to train as a priest. Fisher
had other things in mind, however. He ran away from the college in
1813 to join Serbian forces under Kara George ("Black George")
Petrovich to fight the Turks at Belgrade. 3
With the defeat of the Serbian forces, Fisher joined Austria's
Slavonian Legion to fight the French in Italy. After Napoleon's fall
12
at Waterloo in 1815, Fisher found himself unemployed. Traveling from
Turkey to Holland, the 20-year-old then took passage to America as
a redemptioner (in order to pay his fare) and jumped ship at the mouth
of the Delaware River to gain his freedom. For the next couple of years,
he wandered through America, settling at Port Gibson, Mississippi,
by 1817.
There he opened a tavern and a tailoring shop and applied for
American citizenship in 1818. In the same year he married Elizabeth
Davis and became a Free and Accepted Mason of the York Rite. Fisher
assumed his first civic responsibility in 1819, as assistant commissioner
of a board set up in his county to pay pensions to the veterans of the
American Revolution. With a growing family, he moved in 1821 to
Twin Halls, the Mississippi plantation of his wife on the Big Black River.
There he became a cotton planter and in 1822 a citizen of the United
States. In 1825 he went to Mexico to assist in establishing a York Rite
Masonic Lodge. While there, Fisher took out Mexican naturalization
papers in 1829. Ever alert to new adventures and opportunities, he
embarked upon another career, which was to directly affect Texas, then
part of Mexico.4
In Mexico Fisher applied for an empresario contract to settle
500 families in Texas within the old Haden Edwards Grant and was
appointed collector of customs at Galveston in 1829. Although he did
not receive official credentials, he was recognized as the administrator
of the port but was suspended by order of General Manuel de Mier
y Teran the next year. Fisher then became secretary of the local gov­ernment
(ayuntamiento) at San Felipe, Stephen F. Austin's colonial
center in Texas, but he was again fired, this time because of suspicion
that he was spying for the Mexican authorities. In 1831 General Mier
y Teran appointed Fisher as Mexican customs collector at Anahuac on
Galveston Bay.5
Unfortunately Fisher angered the Anglo-American colonists in
Texas. He arbitrarily ordered that all ships leaving the little port of
Brazoria, 70 miles from Anahuac, as well as other coastal points, clear
their papers at Anahuac. Thus a long trip over primitive roads and
bridgeless rivers was required of ship captains by the customs official,
who failed to explain that his was a temporary order pending the arrival
of a deputy collector for the Brazos River port. Already angered by
other incidents, such as the collection of the Mexican tariff and the
arrest of several popular figures, including William Barrett Travis on
13
charges of sedition, the colonists resisted. Some ship captains ran their
vessels by the Mexican fort on the Brazos, neglecting or refusing to
travel to Anahuac for clearance. In one encounter a Mexican soldier
was wounded. Fisher was forced to seek safety in Matamoros as the
result of these disturbances at Anahuac and because of threats from
the colonists. 6
Never at a loss for a new venture, Fisher then turned to jour­nalism,
becoming the publisher of the Mercurio del Puerto de Mata­moros
in 1832. There he remained for the next three years, using his
knowledge of Spanish, one of 16 modern languages (in addition to
Latin and Greek) which he reportedly knew. Three years later he was
dismissed for his liberal editorial policy and expelled from Mexico. 7
Arriving in New Orleans in October 1835, Fisher immediately
joined with Mexican opposition leader Jose Antonio Mexia in a move­ment
to raise men and supplies to oppose the centralist dictatorship
of Mexican President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Fisher
acted as the commissary general and secretary for the planned attack
on Tampico, Mexico, which ended in failure because of a premature
uprising of the local garrison and the arrival of enemy troops at that
port city. Mexia, leading the attack , was defeated and fled to Texas.
Although the invasion of Mexico by Santa Anna's political enemies
failed, Fisher had established himself among the liberal opposition
to the dictator's centralist rule in Mexico and ultimately on the side
of the Texan colonists in the approaching revolution .8
After the battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, Fisher appeared
once again in Texas. He first visited the Texas prisoner-of-war camp
on Galveston Island as an "observer" and then settled in Houston, where
he became a commission merchant. There he served as a justice of the
peace in 1839, was admitted to the bar, served on the Houston city
council, and became president of the German Union in 1840. The
next year he visited the Mexican state of Yucatan, then in rebellion
against the central government, as a secret agent. The Texas government
had leased its small navy to aid Yucatan, and a state of war still existed
between Texas and Mexico .9
Fisher witnessed the annexation of Texas to the United States
in 1845. When the Texas constitutional convention met in Austin that
year, he served as translator and interpreter for Bexar County's Spanish­speaking
delegation headed by Jose Antonio Navarro. Fisher also
translated the new state constitution and the Ordinance of Annexation
14
into Spanish. The next year he resigned his position as Houston's city
recorder and accepted the position of Spanish translator and keeper
of the Spanish records in the State's General Land Office, which he
held until 1848. 10
Fisher departed Texas in 1850 to establish York Rite Masonic
lodges in Panama and then followed the rush to California's goldfields.
There he remained for the rest of his life . Although he presented his
library, papers, and correspondence to the State of Texas in 1856, his
future arena of adventure and opportunity was San Francisco, where
he practiced law until his death on June 11, 1873 . He also served as
the secretary for the California Land Commission from 1852 to 1856
and became the Greek consul in San Francisco in 1870.11
The arrival of the next Hungarian in Texas, Count Zondogi,
was announced in Houston's leading newspaper, the Telegraph and
Texas Register, on April 9, 1845 . The paper wrote that George Wilkens
Kendall, of "Santa Fe memory" and publisher of the New Orleans
Picayune, and his party of hunters had arrived and were on their way
to "the Commanche [sic] country to have another tumble among the
buffaloes." The party included an English pleasure traveler, the son
of a wealthy New York merchant, an old resident of Texas, a Mr.
"Itle on the Prain'e: the Buffalo Hunt, " by Arthur F Tait
15
Catlett, and the Hungarian Count Zondogi. On April 16 the Houston
editor warned that this party intended "making a regular onslaught
upon the shaggy tenants of the prairie" after visiting San Antonio to
examine "the curiosities in that neighborhood." 12 The true identity
of the Hungarian hunter, Count Zondogi, may never be known. Was
he a genuine nobleman? Was Zondogi his real name? The only factual
thing known about him is that he came to Texas during the spring
of 1845, took part in a buffalo hunt on the San Gabriel River in Central
Texas, and then left. 13
Personal glimpses of this traveler come only from Kendall's com­mentary
to the Houston newspaper and his own paper in New Orleans.
The count's encounter with Texas conditions, especially the roads, was
anything but pleasant. Kendall reported on April 26 that the trip from
Houston to Washington-on-the-Brazos was a matter of "swimming,
topdigging, and floundering ... two days of the time completely
weather and water bound." He went on to report that with horses the
party could get along well enough, "but the Count's lameness, although
he is now nearly over it, induced us to purchase a wagon at Houston,
and it is not altogether so simple a matter to swim a vehicle of that
particular description, neither is it so easy to draw it through the deep,
heavy, black mud of the prairies ." 14
In all probability, Kendall's big-game hunt was a smoke screen
for his real purpose in visiting Texas at that time. The New Orleans
publicist, who "considered himself a sort of guardian of Texas" and
who made the Picayune a reliable source of information on the neigh­boring
frontier republic, was anxious to obtain firsthand information
on Texas' plans for annexation to the United States. Hurrying as he
did with the hunting party from the Texas coast to the Texan seat of
government at Washington-on-the-Brazos, Kendall was determined
to work for annexation and to thwart British and French diplomatic
machinations to the contrary. The Hungarian count was merely an eye­witness
to these momentous intrigues . IS
Events moved rapidly during that year. On February 28, 1845,
the United States Congress had offered statehood to Texas by a joint
resolution by both houses . President AnsonJones of Texas then called
his Congress to meet on June 16, and a convention to consider the
American offer met onJuly 4, 1845 . Both Texas houses voted for annex­ation,
and on December 29, 1845, Texas became the 28th state in the
United States. 16
16
What interested Kendall were the diplomatic moves of Great
Britain to prevent annexation . In an effort to block America's westward
expansion toward the Pacific as well as to benefit from Texas' trade,
especially in cotton and other raw materials, British foreign policy sought
to gain Mexico's recognition of Texan independence, provided that the
latter did not join the United States. When Britain's charge in Texas,
Captain Charles Elliot, left Galveston ostensibly bound for Charleston,
South Carolina, but secretly slipped into Mexico to obtain that country's
agreement to extend recognition to the Republic of Texas, Kendall's
reports of his movements were published in the Picayune in late May
1845 . From New Orleans this news reached American papers in the
East. Kendall got his story and kept the reading public current on Elliot's
secret negotiations with Mexico. In the end, the British effort failed. 17
Having accomplished his goal, Kendall and his party completed
their buffalo hunt and returned to Houston in late May. Unusually
large herds had been found near the San Gabriel River, where Count
Zondogi and his companions killed about 50 animals. The Houston
newspaper revealed that "their excursion to the frontier was exceed­ingly
agreeable , and they have returned delighted with their sport."
Had the hunting party gone a little farther north, to the vicinity of
the Little River, their experience may have been less agreeable because
the Comanches were there, encamped near Torrey's Trading Post about
eight miles below present Waco. 18
Nothing else is known of Count Zondogi in Texas' history. One
of the first Hungarians to visit, he had witnessed an important and
dramatic episode of international intrigue and momentous political
decision relating to the growth of the American republic. He may also
have been the first Hungarian big-game hunter to visit the buffalo range
in North America.
Anton Lochmar appears to have been the first Hungarian immi­grant
to settle permanently in Texas. Lochmar arrived as a member
of John Charles Beales's projected Rio Grande Colony of 800 families
who were to be recruited in New York in 1833 to settle between the
Rio Grande and the Nueces River. The first group, 59 men, women,
and children, arrived at Texas' Copano Bay in 1833 and traveled by
oxcart to the colony site on Las Moras Creek, a tributary of the Rio
Grande. There the multinational colony, including Americans, Britons,
Germans, and Mexicans, built their btush hut or jacal (pole) homes,
cleared the mesquite, prickly pear, and chaparral, dug irrigation canals,
17
and planted their fields . A gristmill and a church were also constructed.
To this beginning, Beales brought a second group of colonists, including
Lochmar, from New York.19
However, Lochmar remained in the Rio Grande Colony, or
Dolores , as it was called, for only a short time. Drought and maraud­ing
Indians in South Texas doomed the colony, and people soon began
to leave for Mexico or elsewhere. One account reported that Lochmar
was captured by the Indians but escaped to Dolores. Within a few years
the Texas Revolution broke out, and the remaining Dolores colonists
fled before the advancing Mexican army in the spring of 1836. 20
Lochmar joined the Texas army, but too late to take part in
any military engagement. Later "Antonio Lockman" and "Antonio
Lockner" received two bounty land grants from the Republic of Texas
government for service rendered from May to October and from
November 1836 to November 1837. Mter his brief army career 24-year­old
Lochmar moved to San Antonio. There he served as a city alderman,
1841-1842, and with two partners, Peter Fohr and George M. Dolson,
opened a "house of entertainment" (a saloon and gambling hall) called
the Bowie Tavern on Commerce Street.21
Who was this pioneer? Anton Lochmar was born in 1812 in
Zengg, a seaport on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, then part of the
Kingdom of Hungary. Little is known of his family other than that
a brother lived in Zagreb (Agram), Croatia, and a nephew was later
a professor at the local university . How Lochmar came to the United
States is not known. But, once in his new home in San Antonio, he
made a brief and spectacular climb to the top. On November 30, 1839,
he married Maria Apolinaria Trevino (1819-1885), granddaughter of
Canary Islanders who had come to San Antonio in 1731. The Lochmars'
children included a son, George W., who never married, and four
daughters, Ysabel, Catarina Augusta, Adelina, and Pauline. 22
Anton and Apolinaria, the last residents of San Antonio's fa­mous
Spanish Colonial Veramendi Palace, opened the Lochmar Hotel
in 1840. It was located on Soledad Street and was described as the
"best house in the city." Surrounded by a wall , the Lochmar Hotel
was said to have been small. Its main entrance was through double
doors wide enough for a team and wagon to enter. The dining room
and sitting rooms flanked the entrance, which opened into a flowery
patio with a well in its center. Around the patio were guest rooms
shaded by porches. All windows facing the street were barred for
18
protection. A back patio was used by servants for cooking and raising
chickens. A rear entrance was used for carriages, horses, and cattle,
and a vegetable garden and orchard were surrounded by a high wall.
The Lochmar Hotel catered to many more lunch and dinner guests
than overnighters. As he prospered Anton Lochmar also acquired 1,476
acres of land on Leon Creek. But his career was brief. He died suddenly
on October 9, 1848, at the age of 36 .23
As with Lochmar, Texas' next known Hungarian immigrants
also arrived as part of colonizing efforts which sought to take advantage
of liberal grants of public land, at first from the Mexican government
and later from the Republic of Texas. Both governments sought to
populate the vast and empty territory which had only about 36,000
citizens in 1836. In addition to Mexican and American empresarios
(entrepreneurs and colonizers), Europeans were also attracted to the
land grants in the newly independent frontier republic during the early
1840's. Germans came with the Adelsverein (Society of Nobles, also
known as the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants to
Texas), and Frenchmen (mainly Alsatians, with Rhineland Germans
and families from the Low Countries) settled in Henri Castro's colony
on vacant land west of the frontier. A single Hungarian immigrant
appeared in each of these, the most successful of the European emigra­tion
efforts to Texas. The story of how each of these men found his
way to Texas as a colonist reveals an interesting part of the develop­ment
of the Republic of Texas. In the case of the Adelsverein, a Hun­garian
nobleman gave unheeded advice concerning the capitalization
and planning for the proposed colony in Texas.
What is known of Baron Paul von Szirmay and his relationship
to Texas comes from the records of the Adelsverein, the most successful
German colonization effort in Texas. Szirmay was the only Hungarian
nobleman of the 50 titled shareholders, who were mostly German
nobles , reigning princes, and royalty. It was organized at Biebrich on
the Rhine in 1842 to buy land in the Republic of Texas. In 1844, as
a stock company, the society modified its purpose to include sponsoring
German immigrants to Texas. After a series of negotiations it received
rights to settle immigrants on the 3,878 ,OOO-acre Fisher-Miller Grant
north of the Llano River in Indian country. New Braunfels, the first
town of the colony, was founded in 1845, and Fredericksburg, the
second settlement, was founded the next year. Prince Carl of Solms­Braunfels,
the first commissioner general in Texas, was soon replaced
19
by Baron Otfried Hans von Meusebach, who made a successful peace
treaty in 1847 with the southern Comanches, thus opening the grant
to German settlers. However, the society's efforts in Texas led to bank­ruptcy
by the summer of 1847, and it was reorganized as the Texas
Verein , still devoted to sending emigrants from Germany. 24
How Baron Paul von Szirmay knew of the Adelsverein is not
known, but in October 1845 he wrote from Hungary that he considered
himself a member, being the owner of one share of its stock (valued
at 5,000 forints, or $2,000 in 1845, which he purchased on credit).
He wrote, "I wish to share joy and sadness with the Verein , and it is
my intention to visit Texas, if possible next year. ... " From his estate
at Okruchla near Eperjes in Upper Hungary, Szirmay continued a steady
stream of letters to the society's officers in Mainz for the next two years,
mostly concerning his plans to visit Texas and his desire to become
the second commissioner general stationed there. By May 1846 he was
prepared to travel by way of Bremen in August or September on a
Verein ship (he preferred a steamer). However, he was unable to attend
the General Assembly of the society in Mainz, because of a six-day
delay in Vienna while he waited for a travel permit. Yet, he wrote, he
felt that the "personal presence of a member of the Verein can only
aid the total well-being of the people." He also stated that he intended
to stay in Texas for at least one year, but a society official reported from
New Orleans in October 1846 that, "We have not heard from von Szir­may.
However, we found out that the Neptune was diverted from
Galveston to here, and has just arrived ." Szirmay was not aboard.2s
Szirmay wrote in November 1846 that an inheritance matter had
prevented his leaving for Texas, but that he hoped to take ship in
December from Bremen or Antwerp. Then, in December, he received
notice that the society'S October General Assembly had appointed
Meusebach as the second commissioner general in Texas. Szirmay
swallowed his disappointment and continued his dreams about emigrat­ing
to Texas with his wife and sons. He delayed his departure again,
this time until March, asking the society for a free ship cabin, free
room and food in Texas, and "some land in either New Braunfels,
Fredericksburg, or in the town yet to be built on the Llano River." 26
Baron von Szirmay must have spent considerable time thinking
of the affairs of the Adelsverein during the winter of 1846-1847 at his
estate in Upper Hungary. Although the society was in deep financial
trouble, he urged the General Assembly to expand its horizons, increase
20
the value and number of its shares, recruit new emigrants, and set its
goals at owning several million acres within five to ten years, which
would increase in value "one hundred to one thousand times." Ascribing
the society's troubles to "miscalculations" and to the war between Mexico
and the United States, he urged that Meusebach found a new town
within the Fisher-Miller Grant (which he named Union Town and,
later, Concordia). Szirmay, saying "I don't believe myself to live in
Utopia," suggested that a "prime colony in the wilderness" be divided
into as many parts as shareholders, who would each send one carefully
selected family and build a school and church. All of "their" families
would travel together from Bremen or Antwerp, and "all other expenses
would be borne together. Within no time at all, the Verein would
reap fabulous results from this undertaking." Szirmay ended his letter,
"It is possible that I am a dreamer ... however, I can hardly believe
this, and the answer that I am a self-serving person, whose aristocratic
tendencies give him such ideas, is one I cannot accept." 27
Because of the distance from his estate in Hungary, Baron von
Szirmay never attended General Assembly meetings in Mainz. Nor
did he ever pay for his share, which was bought on credit. By July 1849
the Verein contemplated legal action as well as diplomatic or adminis­trative
efforts with the Austrian government to collect this debt of 5 ,000
forints plus interest. Finally a letter from Baroness Elotita von Szirmay
was read at the General Assembly meeting on May 30, 1853, in which
she said, "Since my husband left his homeland in 1849, and all of
his possessions were confiscated by the [Austrian 1 government after
he was sentenced, I am asking you to refrain from sending letters and
notices to him at this address." Apparently Szirmay was exiled after
the Revolution of 1848-1849.28
Concordia, Szirmay's Dream Town in Texas
Baron Paul von Szirmay's plan for an ideal community
on Adelsverein land in Texas in 1847 was outlined in a long letter
to the "Titled Members of the Society for the Protection of Ger­man
Immigrants to Texas." There immigrants would find a "fruit­ful
fatherland in Texas," sponsored by the nobles of the society,
"since it is moved by ideologies only noble people have." Con­cordia,
the name selected by Szirmay, was to center around 100
acres in which each of the 50 shareholders was to have a two-
21
acre plot. An additional surrounding 500 acres would be dis­tributed
in ten-acre lots. Then a member of the Verein was to
arrive with nine immigrants (three carpenters, three farmers , one
smith, one bricklayer, and one saddler) to prepare for the follow­ing
40 families by plowing fields and building houses, a grain
silo, and a sawmill. For each family, a house was to be provided
as well as 20 acres of farmland, free passage to Texas, and farming
tools. Food would be provided for a year by the Verein. Each
family would buy its own cattle and seed, live there for five years,
and provide labor for the Verein. A deposit of 1 ,000 forints would
be paid by immigrants to the society in Germany, and half would
form a credit fund for items not provided by the Verein in Texas.
The other half, 500 forints, would go to the Verein for travel
money, 20-acre plots, a house, and food for one year. Szirmay
also outlined the types of occupations needed in "Concordia":
ten farmers, eight carpenters, six bricklayers, three smiths, two
tailors, two shoemakers , two cabinetmakers, two tilemakers, two
beer brewers, and one each locksmith, butcher, tanner, binder,
potter, hatter, harness maker, saddler, wheelwright, turner, dyer,
soapmaker, baker, and stonemason. Further, "Concordia" would
also need a doctor, a pastor, and a schoolteacher as well as a
schoolhouse, a church, an inn, and a community house . The
town was to be governed within a year by a mayor, two coun­selors,
a secretary, and three councilmen. All but the mayor were
to be elected, with each family having two voices. Szirmay figured
that building this community in Texas would cost the Verein
85 ,000 forints . Its costs would be recovered from revenue on
livestock, tools and instruments, and labor, and by building ten
houses on each shareholder's two-acre plot in the town, which
would be sold for profit, as could be their ten acres outside the
town. The town would attract new immigrants within a few years,
and land values would increase, permitting the stockholders to
realize handsome gains on their investment. Szirmay offered to
"oversee the entire matter in America" if his travel costs were
provided. He proposed to take the first ten immigrants himself,
including two or three Hungarian families at his personal
expense. Concluding, he wrote, "I have given this new town the
name of 'Concordia' ." 29
22
Information from another source suggests that Paul Szirmay later
reached America with other Hungarian political exiles. The Hungarian­American
historian Geza Kende wrote in 1927 that Paul Szirrnay accom­panied
exiled poet Frigyes Kerenyi to New Buda, Iowa. On May 22,
1851, Klara Ujhazy, then a resident of that village, wrote:
Two weeks ago our old, very good frisnds, Pali Szirmay and
Frigyes Kerenyi arrived. My father [Laszlo Ujhizi] went on horse­back
to meet them. He met Pali Szirmay, also on horseback, who
was humming "The Parisienne." Szirmay was scouting the road
to New Buda because the stream was overflowing . Kerenyi was
waiting in the nearby village with their cart.
Geza Kende also described Szirmay as "always happy, always
playing." Szirmay built a cabin at New Buda near a stream during
the summer of 1851, but apparently did not stay long and may have
moved to California, where he was ambiguously identified as "an am­bassador."
All of his Utopian plans for a German colony in Texas had
come to naught. 3D
Only one Hungarian has been identified among the thousands
of Adelsverein colonists who arrived during the mid-1840's. When
GottfriedJoseph Petmecky emigrated to Texas in 1845 from Schonau,
Nassau, Germany, he could not have foreseen events which would make
him the father of two branches of a well-known Texas family. Of Hun­garian
ancestry, he was the son of Jakob and Anna Bnlnkmann Pet­mecky
and was born in Hradisch, Bohemia, on August 1, 1809. A
teacher by profession, he married Anna Hiibinger (Huebner) in the
Holler Catholic Church in Limburg on the Lahn on April 4, 1834.
Five children, Franz, Maria, Theresa, Joseph, and Lisette, accompanied
their parents to Texas through Antwerp, Belgium, on the Strabo. 31
Traveling by way of Indianola, the Texas port of the Adelsverein,
the Petmecky family settled in the German colony of New Braunfels.
There they received a town lot and a ten-acre fanning plot nearby until
their headright of 320 acres could be surveyed in the Fisher-Miller Grant
north of the Llano River. The society's colonial grant was located far
into the interior and was controlled by hostile Comanche Indians.
Therefore, the colonists stayed at New Braunfels and planted their first
crop of corn. Gottfried was also employed by the immigration company
as a teacher. He later became city secretary for the newly organized
town of New Braunfels. In 1850 he founded and directed the first
German singing society in Texas, the Germarua Gesangverein. 32
23
Conditions in Texas were anything but those idealized by Baron
von Szirmay. Tragedy struck the Petmeckys soon after their arrival.
During a terrible but unidentified epidemic that swept through the
German colonies in 1846-1847, Anna died on March 19, 1847, at the
age of 35 . Thereafter, with five small children to support, Gottfried
farmed at New Braunfels until his marriage to Johanna Kuhfuss , nee
Richter, on August 8, 1853 . She, too , had lost her spouse during the
epidemic. The Petmeckys then moved to San Antonio, where Gottfried
became a music teacher. Two children, A.W and Lena, were born to
his second marriage, thus establishing the second branch of his family
in Texas. Gottfried Petmecky died in San Antonio in May 187l.33
Following the second marriage of their father, Joseph Carl and
his brother, Franz (Frank), left home. Born on August 12, 1842 ,Joseph
Petmecky apprenticed to a gunsmith, first in San Antonio and then
in Austin to a man named Owens who had a shop on Congress A venue.
Owens had observed Joseph's interest in the craft and gave him a test ­to
file a rough piece of iron into a square. Although the task was impos­sible
, Joseph demonstrated his persistence and was accepted by Owens.
When the gunsmith died in the mid-1850's, the 15-year-old Joseph
carried on the business in his own name. A skillful and inventive man,
Joseph Petmecky thus established a retail sporting goods business,
Austin's oldest, which lasted for three generations-123 years. 34
Gunsmithing was an essential trade during pioneer days in Tex­as.
Settlers, rangers , and cowboys needed pistols and rifles for survival,
and Petmecky was well known throughout the state. His most successful
and memorable invention was the spring-shank steel spur, known as
"the Petmecker spur." Because the spring on the spur would open and
keep the spur from injuring the rider's leg if he fell from his horse
during a cattle drive, Petmecky's invention became a sign of the well­dressed
cowboy. His other inventions and improvements on guns in­cluded
making parts for the Colt revolver as well as bullet molds and
ammunition to fit every size of gun. Texas Rangers and Indian fighters
came to Petmecky for their weapons, including Captain SuI Ross, who
asked him to make a rifle with bullets which would penetrate the
antique Spanish chain mail of the great Comanche chief Peta Nacona.
It was said that Petmecky rebored the mold for a heavier bullet and
charge of powder. Ross supposedly used this gun during the Rangers'
attack on the Comanches at the Pease River in 1860, when Cynthia
Ann Parker was recaptured and Peta Nacona was killed. 35
24
Joe Petmecky and family , Austin, c. 1890-standing, from left,
Jake, Walter, Fred, Anna, and Charlie; seated, Adolphina,
Joseph Carl, Joe Jr., and Howell in /ront
At the start of the Civil War, Petmecky closed his prosperous
shop and volunteered for the duration of the struggle for Confederate
independence . He took part in the New Mexico campaign of Sibley's
Brigade in 1862. Marching by way of EI Paso, Petmecky was with the
Texan troops at the victory at Valverde on February 21, 1862, and the
subsequent advance to Albuquerque . There he was assigned to make
molds and bullets for a variety of weapons used by the Southerners.
Following the decisive defeat of the Confederate force at the battle
at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, Petmecky joined the retreat, reaching
San Antonio in July 1862 . As a private in Company C, 33rd Texas
Cavalry (Duff's Partisan Rangers, 14th Battalion Cavalry), he was de­tailed
to work in the Ordnance Department at Fort Brown in April
1863. Captured by Union forces in November 1863, Petmecky was
listed as a prisoner of war. After the Confederates recaptured the fort
inJuly 1864, he was listed "absent sick at Dallas" throughout the rest
of the summer. During the remainder of the war, he continued to
make molds and bullets and repair and make guns for the Ordnance
Department. He was paroled at Austin in July 1865 .36
25
Joe Petmecky at his gunsmith bench, Austin, 1925, with son
Howell (left) and Robert Felis
Joseph Petmecky's brother, Frank, a blacksmith on Waller Creek
near Austin, also participated in the New Mexico campaign in 1862.
He enlisted in San Antonio as a private in Captain Charles L. Pyron's
Company B, 2nd Regiment Texas Mounted Riflemen, on May 23, 1861,
and by November he had been assigned as a blacksmith to the Quarter­master
Department. Following the disastrous New Mexico campaign,
Frank reenlisted in San Antonio for the remainder of the war and served
in Louisiana until the fall of 1863. Thereafter, because of a fractured
leg, he was assigned to detached service at the Arsenal in San Antonio,
where he made percussion caps for the Ordnance Department. 37
After the war ended Joe Petmecky reopened his store in Austin
and continued to make and sell guns and ammunition for a variety
of firearms. On March 11, 1867, he married Adolphina Sterzing, who
bore him a daughter and six sons . He expanded his business, which
became known as].c. Petmecky Sporting Goods Store, selling bicycles,
RCA Victor phonographs, and other goods. At the turn of the century,
he retired to his farm near Menard. The family business was operated
by his son Fred Frank until 1933 and then by another son, Jake, and
26
a grandson, Jakie, the last of the family to own the store in Austin.
Joseph Petmecky died August 16, 1929, in Austin. 38
Family stories reported that Joe was an expert marksman and
hunter. He taught his sons his skills and the proper care of weapons.
At age 16 his son Fred became a world rifle champion, and his son
Jake founded Austin's first skeet range. Another episode in Joe's life
concerned his role in a vigilante group active in Austin during the latter
years of the Civil War and Reconstruction. With the collapse of the
Confederate and Texan governments during the spring of 1865 , bandits
attempted to rob the State Treasury. Petmecky and the Austin vigilantes
stopped them from getting away with all the money during a shoot­out
at the capitol.
AW. Petmecky, Joseph's half-brother and the son of Gottfried
Petmecky's second marriage, founded a notable family in Fredericks­burg,
which contributed much to the community. Born in San Antonio
on April 1 , 1859, AW. apprenticed himself to a storekeeper in Boerne
at an early age. There he also learned the skills of a stonemason, a
profession which he would practice throughout his life. He moved to
Fredericksburg as a young man and assisted in building many homes
and businesses, including the famous White Elephant Saloon in 1880.
With a mason named Thompson, AW. supposedly borrowed a wooden
elephant from a merry-go-round and made a mold in soft sand. The
white elephant continues to intrigue visitors to Fredericksburg more
than a century later. 39
AW. Petmecky established a goal of public service for his sons.
He served as Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Gillespie County, for
42 years, from 1890 until 1932. Recognized as a compromiser and
peacemaker by his fellow townsmen, he was followed in service to his
community by his sons, Alfred J., who was sheriff for four years and
district clerk for twelve years, and William M., who was Gillespie
County assessor and collector of taxes for 20 years. Petmecky and his
two sons served their community for a total of 78 years. 40
Rudolph Schorobiny (Charobiny) was the only Hungarian iden­tified
in Henri Castro's colony, which was established in 1842 under
the Republic of Texas. French by birth and Jewish by heritage, Castro
received two grant contracts to settle 600 families, mainly from the
French province of Alsace (but including Germans from the Rhineland
and Belgians and Dutch from the Low Countries). In 1844 he estab­lished
Castroville, his first colony town, on the Medina River west of
27
San Antonio. Within a year Castro settled more than 2,100 people,
and headright grants were made in his colony to 485 families and 457
single men, including Schorobiny. During the first few years Castro's
colonists suffered hunger, drought, disease, and Indian depredations
on the western frontier. The experiences of Schorobiny exemplify those
of the pioneers who persisted, braving great danger and hardship.41
Rudolph Schorobiny was born January 25, 1817, in the village of
Rutzdorf, Szepes (Zips) County, Upper Hungary (now Slovakia), the
son of Ferdinand Anton and Anna Magista Schorobiny. Nothing further
is known of Rudolph's early life until he joined Henti Castro's colony
and sailed from Le Havre, France, on the American vessel Deaucalion
for Texas. Mter an eight-week Atlantic crossing, Schorobiny first landed
at New Orleans and then took passage on the steamer Galveston for
the port of Galveston, which he reached December 15, 1845. From
there he joined other immigrants going to Houston by way of Buffalo
Bayou on a smaller steamer. While on board, so the story goes, Schoro­biny
met General Sam Houston, who was taking "some fine horses
. . . up the country ." Noticing the shivering young men near the
steamer's boiler, the Texas hero said, "Come, I will warm you up,"
and bought each a whiskey in the boat's saloon.42
After a month's stay in Houston, Schorobiny set out for San
Antonio to join Castro's colony and go into farming. Traveling by ox­drawn
wagon, he was hampered by rain and flooded creeks, and the
small party accompanying him was alert for Indians, for they had heard
of a colonist being killed between Port Lavaca and San Antonio. After
a tedious trek Schorobiny arrived in San Antonio in April 1846 and
then went on to Castroville, the seat of Henri Castro's colony in Medina
County. Schorobiny was given a town lot and 20 acres of farmland
at the satellite colony of Quihi, ten miles west of Castroville. In addi­tion,
he was entitled to a headright of 320 acres as a single man in
the colony, and he received farm implements and corn and bacon until
he could harvest his first crop .43
Schorobiny's first experience with farming on the Texas frontier
ended in failure, however. In company with his traveling companions
from Houston, Louis Korn and his brother and a Dr. Acke, Schorobiny
said, "We for a short time tried farming, but none of us possessing
either sufficient experience or means, this agricultural society in con­sequence
of trials, disappointments, and sickness, quickly dissolved,
an d we parted. ,, 44
28
.' ~
e
'"~ Rudolph Schorobiny
In August 1846 he joined the Texas Ranger company of Captain
John Connor to patrol the western frontier against Indian depredations.
After two months' scouting Connor's company enlisted in Peter Hans­borough
Bell's regiment of mounted riflemen, which mustered into
the u.s. Army at the outbreak of the war with Mexico. Schorobiny
served for one year in northern Mexico and South Texas as part of Bell's
Regiment. He was discharged at San Antonio at the end of his enlist­ment
in 1847 and returned to Quihi. 45
The young Hungarian immigrant once again settled on his Castro
colony headright at Quihi, which was described as having "a lovely
landscape, encircled with mountain ridges, of highly fertile soil, with
good water, and an abundance of building and fence material." There
Schorobiny turned once again to farming and stock raising. "Grass and
water were plentiful, with no brush then, but open and lovely valleys.
Game and wild honey were in abundance, and living cheap. The seasons
were good and splendid crops made, and the hardy pioneers began
to enjoy the fruits of their labor and sacrifices," according to one writer.
On a ridge above Quihi Creek which offered a commanding view of
the valley, Schorobiny built his house of red sandstone .
29
On November 25, 1847, he married Francisca Meyer, a 16-year­old
immigrant from Alsace , at Castroville in a ceremony performed
by Bishop Claude-Marie Dubuis, the second Bishop of Galveston. Then,
in February 1848, Schorobiny returned home from a search for his
wandering cattle and made a grim discovery. Francisca was missing,
and his farmhouse had been ransacked . During his absence a band
of Lipan and Kickapoo Indians had made a raid. They had slain Blas
Meyer, Francisca's brother, and attempted to carry her away into cap­tivity.
Choosing to escape or die trying, she jumped from the horse
about a half mile from her home and raced for a thicket of oaks. The
Indians fired two arrows into the fleeing woman, wounding her in the
back. Fearing pursuit by the colonists, however, they fled without scalp­ing
their victim. Francisca crawled to the village of Quihi, where she
was nursed back to health by the colonists. Upon her recovery, she
and Rudolph were presented with a large town lot in Quihi, where
they lived for six years before returning to their home two miles from
the settlement. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Of six
children born to them, only two, Rafael and Michael, reached maturity.
They also adopted a daughter, Ottilie. 46
The farming and ranching community of Quihi slowly pros­pered
as the immigrant farmers from Alsace and Germany acquired
farm animals and tools . The military road from San Antonio to the
Rudolph Schorobiny 's house in Quihi, c. 1930
30
Rio Grande passed Quihi, then the last settlement on the road to the
west, and the farmers also prospered by selling produce to travelers
on their way to the California goldfields after 1849. A church and a
school were built as the community grew in the years before the Civil
War. Corn, wheat, oats, cereals, and vegetables were planted by the
farmers . Schorobiny was the first to successfully plant onions. 47
"The Wilderness Blooming with Civzlization"­A
Pioneer Settler's Account
On September 1, 1879, a third of a century afterwards,
Rudolph Schorobiny wrote a glowing recollection of the founding
of old Quihi settlement to Lorenzo Castro, the colonizer's son .
This was published in the San Antonio Texas Sun in March 1880:
"In the commencement of March 1846, the first settlers,
numbering about twenty-five families , started for the new colony
of Quihi, on the Quihi creek, ten miles west from Castroville;
it was a lovely landscape, encircled with mountain ridges, of highly
fertile soil, with good water, and an abundance of building and
fence material. To every family a city lot of twenty acres was gratu­itously
given by the founder, Mr. H[ emil Castro, apart from the
head right of 320 or 160 acres. Mr. Castro appointed two men,
James Brown and David Burnham, to provide the colonists with
game, which abounded in the neighborhood , and as they were
experienced and practical men, to advise and superintend the col­onists.
A Mexican by the name of Aug[ustine?] Trevino proved
himself very useful as teamster and instructor in cattle raising.
The agriculturists were furnished with corn meal and bacon, to­gether
with some implements. Everything was progressing finely ,
and everybody was busy to build houses and plant corn when a
dreadful blow was dealt to our Colony. The family of Brinkhoff,
consisting of five persons located in the so-called lower village,
were murdered by Commanche [sic] Indians; which sad event
caused a portion of the colonists to leave the place, and to move
to San Antonio or other regions .... At first our colony made
but little headway in agriculture, as the settlers lacked suitable
draught animals and necessary implements[ .] [M]oreover the
continual danger or fear and prevailing insecurity of life and prop­erty
caused by Indian raids caused our settlers to be despondent
and apathetic , yet perseverance, as it will everywhere, carried us
through our troubles. The military road built from San Antonio
to the Rio Grande, via Quihi, soon led to a marked improvement
31
of our condition; our productions found a good and ready market
at the forts which the u.s. Government erected along the Mexican
boundary. Our Quihi became a gathering place for the farmers
of the neighborhood , and easily and quickly acquired a stately
church building, as well as a spacious school. The settlement
gradually began to expand; hundreds of acres were put under
fence and plow; cattle raising was a paying business, as the military
posts required a large amount of beef every year. Altogether, the
period immediately preceding the rebellion was one of the highest
prosperity for our village and colony . ... Then came the civil
war, and with it a period of Progression, as fields and habitations
became desolated and fell a prey to temporary decay. Since then,
however, our colony has quickly recovered from its deplorable
effects, and has entered on a new era, of which we hope it will
endure for many, many years to come. Our village population
is increasing steadily; our mode of agriculture is being improved
by the appliance of time-saving machines; cattle raising alone
suffers somewhat from losses through thieves and raiders.
Everybody is busy now-even those who were lazy before, now
vigorously take a part in the general activity of our settlement.
Thus, we look forward to a happy future with hopefulness and
cheerful hearts."
Schorobiny then summarized the 1879 condition of
Quihi, reporting that cultivated land lay three to four miles on
each side of the village. Of these 3,000 acres, two-thirds were
planted in corn and the rest in other grains and vegetables.
Annual yields from the fertile soils averaged 25 to 40 bushels
of corn, 10 to 20 bushels of wheat, and 50 to 75 bushels of oats
per acre. By that year the settlers had acquired machinery and
draft animals, enjoyed good health "as the climate is so very
salubrious and mild," and lived in the well-built houses of the
earliest settlers. Schorobiny concluded: "Still, there are some yet
living, who after hard struggles and severe trials, are now enjoying
the fruits of their labors in peace and contentment." 48
Schorobiny served asJustice of the Peace for Precinct 2 of Medina
County, beginning in 185l. He was later followed in this office by
his son Rafael (c. 1855-1894) in 1885 , and then by his other son,Judge
Michael Schorobiny (1858-1939) , who held the office for more than
43 years. "It is possible the position has been in the Schorobiny family
since its creation." Rudolph Schorobiny also was a founding member
32
Judge Michael Schorobiny
of the Quihi Schutzenverein (target-shooting club) in 1890. In 1894
he applied for a pension as a veteran of the Mexican War. It was said
that he had lived under five flags (Hungary, Mexico , Texas, the United
States, and the Confederacy). Schorobiny died at his home on April
24, 1908, at the age of 91 and was buried in the private family cemetery
on his ranch. 49
Judge Michael Schorobiny carried on his father's public service
as justice of the peace until his death in 1939. He also was a founder
of the Quihi Schutzenverein and served as chairman of the Medina
County Republican Executive Committee. In 1937 he served as Medina
County chairman of the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial
Celebration committee. It was said that he was "the last of the direct
descendants of the original Castro colonists to spend his entire life on
his father's headright." Michael Schorobiny never married, and so, with
him, the family ended.50
The experiences of Rudolph Schorobiny were as typical of the
Texas frontier as those of his fellow Texans, most of whom were farmers
and ranchers. All faced common dangers. As the lone farmer among
the Hungarians who came to Texas prior to the Revolution of 1848-1849
and the only Hungarian-Texan Mexican War veteran, he became a
33
respected community leader in a county heavily populated by Germans
and Alsatians.
Economic possibilities as well as the spirit of wanderlust brought
the earliest Hungarians to Texas. Seeking a better livelihood where
land was plentiful and cheap and opportunity boundless appealed to
Lochmar, Petmecky, and Schorobiny. On the other hand, Fisher and
Count Zondogi sought adventure or seized opportunities where they
existed in the fast-changing political arena of Texas during the 1830's
and 1840's. Perhaps seeking the "other side of the world," these men
witnessed dramatic changes which led to Texas' future as part of the
United States and then departed, while the others stayed and became
part of the state's history. Interestingly, none of them started a chain
of immigration of friends and relatives who might have followed them
to America and to Texas. Other pioneer Hungarians may also have
found their way to Texas, but their stories are not known.
A new kind of Hungarian immigrant began to appear in Texas
in the early 1850's. Thousands of political refugees from the Hungarian
Revolution of 1848-1849 chose exile in America, and a score or more
found Texas an inviting new homeland. Led by a former Hungarian
government official, Laszlo Ujhizi, some began appearing in the San
Antonio area, and others scattered to towns around the state. Called
the 48ers, they formed the first significant Hungarian presence in Texas.
Ujhizi's story is known in greater detail than that of others, and it
marks the beginning of this new immigration.
34
CHAPTER THREE
"If one has to be in America, one is better off in Texas."
Laszlo U"" jhazi, the Great Exile
The first significant wave of Hungarian emigrants, albeit few in
number, began to arrive in the state during the 1850's. "If one
has to be in America ... one is better off in Texas," was Lasz16
Ujhazi's observation to Louis Kossuth in 1852. Ujhazi, who had been
to Texas for the first time that year, liked the mild climate and recom­mended
the state as a favorable destination for the exiles and refugees
of Hungary's failed struggle for freedom from Austria in 1848-1849.
Lasz16 Ujhazi was the leader of the Hungarian exiles who fled
to America. He identified Texas as a prime site for emigration and
moved there, abandoning his attempt to form a Hungarian colony on
the Iowa prairies. The details of Ujhazi's American and Texas career
are better known than in the case of many other Hungarian 48ers. His
letters, with those of his family, friends, and political associates of the
revolution, have been preserved in Hungarian archives, and his role
and significance as a participant in the revolution and as the leader
of the emigres in America has been analyzed and widely published
in Hungarian literature.
Described as a man of strong but inflexible character, Ujhazi
was reputedly one of the most radical among Hungarian liberal politi­cians
during the revolution, supporting Hungary's independence and
stubbornly maintaining with great integrity his resolution never to
35
LaszlO UJhazi
recognize a Habsburg as the Hungarian monarch. He unfailingly upheld
these principles until his death, refusing to accept amnesty and return
to his homeland. As a result of his staunch republicanism and admira­tion
for democracy, he became an American citizen and a farmer and
rancher on Texas' frontier near San Antonio .!
Laszlo Ujhazi was born January 20, 1795 , on his family's estate
of Budamer between Kassa and Eperjes in Saros County, Upper Hungary
(now Czechoslovakia). Part of the large and powerful Protestant lesser
nobility, the Ujhazy family of Budamer (and Bogdany, Boki, K6szeg,
Lemes, Terebo, and Vargony) traced its line from 1669, when its patent
of nobility was granted by King Leopold I, a Habsburg. (The "y" ending
of the family name indicated its nobility, and Laszlo used that spelling
until his exile. At that time he symbolically adopted the democratic
"i", which he retained until his death. His children, however, did not
use the "i" even in the United States.) The son ofSamuelUjhazy (1764-
1816) and Polixina Radvanszky, Lasz16 attended the lower schools in
Eperjes and Debrecen and received his degree in law at Sarospatak. 2
As a member of Hungary's lesser, untitled nobility, Ujhazi's
status in Hungarian society was assured from birth. Powerful in the
politics of their local counties, the lesser nobles jealously protected their
36
{~.
Louis Kossuth in 1848
ancient rights of freedom from taxation, the right of habeas corpus,
free ownership of land, and the right to bear arms when the country
was invaded. Their elected representatives sat in the Lower House of
the Hungarian Diet. It was said that these "so-called bene possessionati
landowners with a few thousand acres of land . . . usually wielded
great influence in politics, national as well as local." 3
Ujhazi married Terez Varady Szakmary, the daughter of Roza
Benyovszky and Donat Varady Szakmary, about 1818. Her grandfather,
Count Moric Benyovszky, was a world traveler who had been killed
in Madagascar in 1786. To Laszlo and Terez were born four sons and
four daughters . Of their close-knit family, five children later accom­panied
their parents to the United States in 1849: Klara (Mrs. Joseph
Kellerschon, 1821-189?), Farkas (1827-1898), Tivadar (1832-1870),
Ilona (Helen-Mrs. Vilmos Madarasz, 1838-1899), and LaszloJr. (1841-
1906). Two daughters, Pauline (Mrs. Karoly Nagy, 1819-1872) and
Klementine (Mrs. Gusztiiv Fay, 1822-1888), and a son, Sandor (1824-
1864), remained in Hungary.4
An early convert to the Hungarian Reform Movement of the
1820's and 1830's, Ujhazi came into contact with Louis Kossuth (1802-
1894) as early as 183l. He remained a staunch and loyal follower of
37
Buda and Pest in 1848
Kossuth, the Hungarian Reform Movement's most radical leader, all
of his life. Ujhazi's role in county and national politics began early.
He was a member of the liberal opposition, both in the Sitos County
Assembly and in the National Diet. He distributed Kossuth's hand­written
parliamentary reports in Saros County and was recognized as
an opposition leader in support of reforms; as such he came under
police surveillance. j
Early in 1837 Ujhazi was accused of treason by the conservative
forces in the County Assembly, but no legal proceedings were brought,
and he and others of the "Parliamentary youth" were given amnesty
in 1840. Ujhazi advocated republican governmental ideals and the abo­lition
of ancient feudal practices and serfdom, making him an enemy
of his own noble class in the County Assembly. In April 1848 he was
appointed lord-lieutenant (one source called him the county judge)
of Saros County by the newly created Hungarian government. Although
local reactionaries in the Sitos Assembly tried to depose and arrest him,
Ujhazi was vindicated by a government commissioner and continued
to carry out the reforms of the April Laws. InJuly he became a member
of the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament in Pest. 6
With the outbreak of hostilities and the invasion of Hungary
by a Croatian army, followed by that of the Austrians in the fall of
1848, Ujhazi ordered the formation of three regiments in Sitos County
to defend the homeland. One, called the Ujhazi Hunters, fought in
northern Hungary with General Arthur Gorgey during the winter of
1848-1849. Ujhazi was then sent as government commissioner to
Pozsony (another source reported that he went to Sopron) late in Sep-
38
tember to recruit troops and supply the new national army (called the
Honved Army, or "defender of the fatherland"). Supposedly a fusilier
corps was named for him. On October 20 he and his 16-year-old son,
Tivadar, fought at the Battle of Schwechat, a suburb of Vienna, and
his older son, Farkas, was wounded while fighting under General Mor
Perczel. When the Austrian forces captured Buda in December, Ujhazi
and his family fled eastward to Debrecen with Kossuth and the Hungar­ian
government and Parliament. 7
In the nationalist Hungarian Parliament at Debrecen, Ujhazi
was president of the Democratic Republican Club and the Radical Parry.
A red feather worn in the hatband, symbolic of republicanism, distin­guished
the members of this group. Ujhazi was among the first to
support Kossuth in the deposition of the Habsburg dynasty and the
call for establishment of a Hungarian republic in April 1849. The next
month the government sent him as civilian commissioner to the gigantic
and virtually impregnable fortress of Komarom on the Danube. His
mission was to ensure the loyalty of its defenders, recruit new soldiers,
and obtain supplies. With Ujhazi went his wife, daughters Klara and
Helen, and sons Tivadar, Farkas, and young Laszlo Jr. In Komarom
Ujhazi had one vote on the military council. His powers were coequal
~.~"Je~:;k. ,~
A saiiy of Huszars from the fortress of Komarom,
February 24, 1849
39
with the military commander, General Gyorgy Klapka. Even after the
surrender of the last Hungarian field army at Vilagos in August 1849,
Komarom held out for two months before negotiating a surrender with
amnesty on October 3. Ujhazi did not sign the capitulation.8
The amnesty provided that all officers could either return home
or leave the country with a passport. The Austrians had previously
marked Ujhazi for execution, and to prevent this General Klapka com­missioned
him a major. Ujhazi chose exile. On October 11, 1849, he
was given a passport, without privilege of return to Hungary, to emi­grate
to the United States. Following the surrender, Ujhazi and others
formed an American emigration society, which gathered in Hamburg
by the end of October for the Atlantic voyage. Ujhazi, his family, and
others sailed on the Hermann for New York, arriving in America, "the
freest country" of their time, on December 16, 1849. Thus, in his mid­fifties,
Ujhazi's permanent-and, later, self-imposed-exile began.9
The Hungarian Revolution aroused great sympathy in the
United States. Even in the remote community of New Braunfels, Texas
citizens were eager for news, asking the postmaster to "read something
to us. No news from Hungary?" When Ujhazi and his first group of
refugees reached America, they were welcomed as heroes. 1O
While waiting in Hamburg during the fall of 1849, Ujhazi had
been anxious for the future of the emigres. He made a short trip to
England, where he asked the American minister to petition President
Zachary Taylor to grant asylum to the exiles. This the president did,
"offering them the benefits and protection of a free country." The exiles'
arrival in New York was greeted by overwhelming enthusiasm. Astor
House, and, later, Hungarian House, had been rented for them by
a committee of welcome. The city and state of New York gave recep­tions,
and Ujhazi, his family, and a delegation were invited to visit
Washington, D.C. On the way Ujhazi spoke to a gathering in Phila­delphia's
Independence Square in German, his "universal" language.
The Hungarians were treated to serenades and torchlight processions.
In the national capital Ujhazi and his delegation were received by the
president and invited to dine at the White House. II
At Ujhazi's request, Senators Lewis Cass and William H. Seward
submitted a bill in Congress to provide the refugees with free land
"in recognition of their great services for human freedom," but the
bill failed. The Hungarians then returned to New York, where Ujhazi
and his two older sons, Tivadar and Farkas, made their declarations
40
of intent to become citizens of the United States on December 31 ,
1849, just two weeks after their arrival. As American public enthusiasm
for the exiles began to wane, Ujhazi and other exiles sought to raise
funds and achieve their political goals, but dissension soon arose among
them, and Ujhazi left in April 1850 to start a Hungarian colony in
the American West. 12
Ujhazi set two goals during his first months in the United States.
The first was to work for Louis Kossuth's liberation from internment
in Turkey, and the second was to establish a Hungarian agricultural
colony which would serve to keep the exiles together until the revolution
could be renewed to gain Hungarian independence. Ujhazi wanted
to establish a community in which "political life should be patterned
after the American model, while social and domestic life should preserve
the features of life in Hungary." On March 27, 1850, while still in
New York, he was named by Kossuth as his envoy plenipotentiary and
representative to America. Although Ujhazi never attempted to present
his credentials as the representative of a now-defunct government to
the American secretary of state, he pursued his goals, the first succeeding
and the latter failing, for his first two years in America.13
Ujhazi, his family, and a few other emigres traveled westward
by canal boat, lake steamer, railroad, and stagecoach through the Great
Lakes to Chicago and St. Louis. He established his proposed Hungarian
colony on vacant government land on the prairies of Decatur County,
Iowa, in the late summer of 1850 and named it New Buda. Ujhazi
described the location of New Buda, in southern Iowa on the Thompson
River, to a friend : the soil was fertile, the woods were untouched, and
the view was beautiful. He went on to say that "We found suitable
rolling hills to plant grapes; our next aim is to plant them as soon as
possible." Ujhizi preempted twelve sections of land (640 acres to a
section) and began to build his log "castle." Other Hungarians settled
nearby. Thereafter, when not laboring to build, fence, and cultivate
the land, and care for his newly acquired livestock, Ujhazi took care
of his large correspondence. This included communication with Kos­suth
, official papers, arrangements for more Hungarians to come to
America, publications, and translations of Kossuth's speeches to be
presented to Congress. 14
Ujhazi was appointed postmaster for New Buda (with an annual
salary of $200) in 1850 and entertained visiting exiles, many of whom
stayed but a short time before moving on. The scattered farm commu-
41
nity never exceeded 75 inhabitants and later became a ghost town.
It was said that the Hungarians' "agricultural methods greatly amused
their frontier neighbors ." In New Buda Ujhazi and his family attempted
to maintain their accustomed aristocratic way oflife while performing
manual labor as a frontier farm family. 15
Winter had arrived by the time the Ujhazis' house was com­pleted.
They invited their American and Hungarian neighbors to a
dedication and celebration which lasted for three days. A document
signed by the family and their friends was sealed in a bottle and buried
under the cornerstone to mark the foundation of New Buda. During
the cold blasts of winter, the family gathered in the house, while Ujhazi
smoked his pipe and engaged in long conversations with fellow exiles
on plans for the future . He was described as a "quiet, nonostentatious
man, whose main goal was to achieve personal integrity for himself
and his companions by means of self-sufficient hard labor on free soil"
in the western wilderness. In his communications to friends in Europe,
Ujhazi pointed out that "We enjoy liberty already, and the land which
is nourishing us will be loved by all of us; it will be our future country.
We will love it, but we will not forget our mother country either." 16
During his time in New Buda, Ujhazi corresponded with Presi­dent
Millard Fillmore, the secretary of state, and other high officials.
His letters concerned Kossuth's release from internment in Turkey and
possible arrival in the United States. Obtaining free goverrunent land
for the exiles and the settlement of New Buda also occupied his atten­tion
. Then, on October 6, 1851, tragedy struck the struggling family.
Ujhazi's wife died. Already in ill health before leaving Hungary, Terez
Ujhazi died as a result of the stress of exile as well as the hard physical
labor which she was forced to perform for the first time in her life.
She was buried on the family farm without religious services, since her
husband disliked priests. 17
In his depression over his beloved wife's death, Ujhazi wrote
to his father-in-law on October 25, 1851 , pouring out his grief and
loneliness in a foreign land. His mourning was deep for the mother
of his children, who had followed him into exile. He wrote that "I
would rather have given up my own happiness and offer my freedom
to my enemies to take my life in order to lengthen the life of the best
mother in her old country." As a result of her death, Ujhazi became
restless and began to think of moving to the milder climate of Arkansas
or Texas , where he could cultivate vineyards. 18
42
./
~~
.. j ~t I
\
'; .. \.. L..-::';'
." .r,,;\ h·,. ...·.iIlIldlr.'
Louis Kossuth landing in America
His mood brightened considerably with the arrival of Louis
Kossuth in America December 5, 1851. The Hungarian leader-in-exile
arrived on the American war vessel Mississippi, which had been sent
to bring him from Turkey. He was hailed as the "Hungarian George
Washington" and was greeted with banquets, parades, and speeches.
From New York Kossuth went to Washington, where he met the presi­dent
and members of Congress but failed to gain support for the re­sumption
of the Hungarian Revolution. Thereafter he began a national
tour which lasted for six months. Traveling westward to the Mississippi
Valley, he reached St. Louis on March 9, 1852 .19
Unable to afford a longer trip, Ujhazi and a fellow exile from
New Buda, Gyorgy Pomutz, went to meet Kossuth in St. Louis . There
Ujhazi and Kossuth had an hour-long private visit. Ujhazi hoped that
Kossuth would become the leader of the exiles in New Buda and was
also prepared to follow him elsewhere. But Kossuth rejected the idea,
choosing to return to Europe to continue his struggle for Hungarian
independence. He had been offered land in several states, including
1,000 acres in Texas, and he asked Ujhazi to take possession of it for
him. Thus Ujhizi, although disappointed that Kossuth would not settle
in a Hungarian colony in America, had an opportunity to seek land
for himself in Texas. He considered himself still in Kossuth's service
and retained the hope that Kossuth would support a Hungarian colony
in the United States at some future time . 20
43
$ 5 Kossuth Bond, to be paid on demand "one year after the
establishment in fact of the Independent Hungarian Government"
Ujhazi made his first trip to Texas during the spring of 1852
shortly after leaving Kossuth. He traveled first by riverboat and then
overland in March and April by way of Little Rock, Arkansas. He rode
the first 650 miles on horseback and then walked for the last 200 miles
when his horse became lame. Ujhazi wrote to Kossuth on April 22,
1852, that he stayed in Austin one night to see the governor and inquire
about land at the General Land Office. He found the citizens of Austin
recovering from the big April 21 celebration of San Jacinto Day, and
Governor Peter Hansborough Bell had been too exhausted to receive
him. He wrote that "Mter many hardships we arrived in Austin, the
capital of this state, but what kind of a capital? ... It looks as filthy
as a Turkish town .. . . To call such as this a 'city' is decidedly an
exaggeration. Even the smaller settlements in Texas were much nicer
than this Capital. We walk around in a disgusting accumulation of
trash." A local German told Ujhazi that Austin "had no importance,
the population no money and no excellence in high moral standing. "
Ujhazi then traveled to Corpus Christi to inspect the land given to
Kossuth by land promoter Henry 1. Kinney. 21
In informing Kossuth of conditions in Texas, where the federal
government owned no public lands, Ujhazi wrote:
If one has to be in America (may the good Lord protect
you from this), one is better offin Texas, which gives you certain
advantages ... for instance, the climate . ... The only possible
44
way to live here without backbreaking labor is the growing of
cattle, which occupation gives you plenty of opportunity to live
without worry and pain. In this case one could have a spiritual
life, and one could concentrate himself in cultural pursuits.
Everyone who has seen the surrbundings of the Nueces [River 1
is very enthusiastic about it. . . . There is no great difference
between Arkansas and Texas; the soil improved slowly after we
entered Texas. The trouble was that the more fertile grew the
plains, the more miserable were the forests.
We found many blessed plains which looked very similar
to those in Hungary, undulating in the breezes, and on those
places we shed many tears over the velvety grass. We had to think
how happy we could have been if tyranny had not expelled us
from the land of our forefathers. And I had to think how unhappy
I am, a wanderer without a country, who never can find the least
surrogate for a fatherland . I, who would never be happy even in
Eldorado, since I have lost part of my life-my wife. 22
Ujhazi met Kinney in Corpus Christi, inspected the 1,000 acres
which were bordered by the Nueces River on the Barranco Blanco (now
the Calallen area), and accepted the deed for Kossuth. Kossuth never
made use of the gift, and in all probability Kinney's ownership and
sale of the land was fraudulent. In telling Kossuth about Corpus Christi,
which was located where the Nueces River flowed into the Gulf of
Mexico , Ujhazi wrote:
.. . there is no woodland, only prairie; most of the forest
is on the shore of the river, and its extension is not wider than
a hundred feet on both sides of the river, and the wood is crippled
and crooked. On the prairie there are some stunted trees and
bushes, so that the fences are made out of shrubs. Moreover, there
is a great lack of drinking water.
Nothing more is known of Ujhazi's meeting with Kinney.23
In recording his observations in Corpus Christi, Ujhazi stated
that the "endless prairie" between the Nueces and the Rio Grande in
South Texas were grazed by thousands upon thousands of wild mus­tangs
. These horses were rounded up by people from Mexico, who
tamed some and sold them in Corpus Christi for $6 to $10 a head. 24
Even before leaving for St. Louis to meet Kossuth, Ujhazi had
urged a London banker to forward money which was being sent to
him by his sister and his children in Hungary as soon as possible, for
"without the money, we are not able to pay for our ranch in Texas."
Whether he received this money before leaving Iowa is not known.
45
During the trip Ujhazi and his companion, Pomutz, camped out at
night, often near a farmhouse where they could obtain milk to drink.
Mter visiting Corpus Christi he reported to Kossuth that he and Pomutz
had only $100 left and that they would have to work their way back
to St. Louis and Iowa. How the 57-year-old man earned money during
the return to New Buda is unknown. He arrived at the end of August
1852, having been away from home for six months. 2) In her diary on
September 14, 1852, Klara Ujhazy quoted her father's reaction to his
Texas journey:
I almost gave up on finding a place which I liked, when
finally, in the State of Texas 130 miles from the city of Corpus
Christi, traveling northwest, I arrived on the beautiful banks of
the Guadalupe River. I found there , all in all , the best land,
excellent water, and pleasant climate. The fields are green even
during the winter. One does not need any stable or fodder , so
keeping cattle is easy and profitable. Nature alone makes one the
owner of great herds of horses and cattle.
However, they don't give Paradise away free. There are no
free lands in Texas. We can't go there with our hands empty as we
came to Iowa. We must buy the land there for good money. 26
During the harvest season and winter of 1852-1853, Ujhazi made prep­arations
to sell his preemption rights and most of his livestock on his
Iowa farm. He had probably visited San Antonio, a frontier town of
16,000, in 1852. There he explored the surrounding farmland and
employed local attorney CN. Riotte to begin purchases for him on
Olmos Creek above the headwaters of the San Antonio River, four miles
north of the city. In November 1852 Riotte bought 139 acres in two
parcels of land for $530 from the City of San Antonio, of which only
20 percent was pal· d do wn. 27
In March 1853 Ujhazi wrote to a friend in London that all future
correspondence was to be addressed to him in care of CN. Riotte in
San Antonio (by way of New Orleans). However, it was June before
Ujhazi and his daughter Klara and sons Tivadar, Farkas, and Laszl6
Jr. left for Texas. To his great disappointment and disapproval, his
youngest daughter, 15-year-old Helen (Ilona, Ilka) , married Vilmos
Madarasz, the teenaged son of Laszl6 Madarasz, who had been Kossuth's
police commissioner during the revolution and was now an exile in
New Buda. The young couple were married onJune 4,1853, in Gentry
County, Missouri, by a justice of the peace. Ujhazi opposed the marriage
and was estranged from his daughter for the next five years. 28
46
One ofUjhazi's last acts in New Buda was to exhume his wife's
coffin and load it on one of the ox wagons for the long overland journey
to San Antonio. In a March 4, 1853, letter to his daughter Pauline
Nagy in Hungary, Ujhiizi wrote:
My friend Riotte , whom I commissioned in Texas, bought
a small but very handsome land , only 196 hold [ one hold equals
1.42 acres), for us for $1620.00. I have to pay only one fifth of
the price now, the rest over fifty years with eight percent interest.
It is not exactly cheap , but it is near the city of San Antonio along
the banks of the river of the same name, and that increases its
value. We plan to leave on the first of May when the roads are
safe, [going] partly by river, partly by horse and by wagon.
According to our travel experience, we should arrive in our desti­nation
by the end of August. With the others, a longer but not
noticeable crate is prepared in which we will take the body of your
mother of blessed memory because it would not be permissible
that her remains should be left here, her grave sunk into forgetful­ness
with strange and indifferent feet trampling over it. We rather
will take her casket with us and will put her to eternal rest on
our new and final farm . For this reason , I [will] call that manor
SIrmezo [Hungarian for "field of sighing ," or "cemetery"] .
How many other exiles accompanied the Ujhizis to Texas is
not known, although one source reponed that a Lajos Farkas from Zem­plen
County, Hungary, made the journey of over a thousand miles. 29
On April 29, 1853, Klara Ujhazy recorded in her diary that
the wagons had been packed in preparation for the "journey through
unknown lands on a longer and more endless road to find a new coun­try."
Although engaged to Joseph KellerschOn, son of a local German
immigrant farmer, 32-year-old Kliira, who the family thought would
never marry, dutifully accompanied her father and three brothers, who
would need her to run their new household. 30
Traveling first by riverboat and then overland through Missouri,
Arkansas, and the Indian Territory, the slow-moving wagon train ap­proached
Texas during the late summer of 1853. The German news­paper,
San Antonio Zeitung, noted on July 30, 1853, that "the old
Hungarian hero and patriot may now shortly be expected in our midst.
On July 2 he left Missouri . . . to move to the Texas border through
the steppes. He carries with him the remains of his wife ... as a dear
relic." As they passed through New Blaunfels on the final leg of their
journey, the local newspaper noted their arrival on September 1, and
48
the next day a San Antonio paper reported that "General Ujhazi, the
former Governor of Komarom," had arrived there. 31
Ujhazi's record of his move to Texas included interesting com­ments
on the land and people of the West. In choosing the shortest
road to San Antonio , he traveled through Arkansas and entered the
Indian Territory before reaching the Red River and Texas . Although
he wanted to see the Indians, he was afraid that his 15 horses would
be stolen. But, he wrote:
We started toward Indian land. After ten days of horseback
riding, without any problem, we crossed two nations , the Choctaw
and the Chickasaw . This road was even better . .. because many
of the Indians knew English. Our horses found rich pastures, and
we found enough food .
Ujhazi saw in the Indian Territory "one of the most beautiful
lands I have seen so far in America," bought peaches from a half­blooded
Indian, and commented on the fate of America's Indians,
who had "lost the strength of their ancestors" and adopted the "sins
of the white world." 32
New Braunfels teacher, lawyer, and civic leader Hermann
Seele wrote on September 7, 1853 , that "When Ujhazi, after
he had camped at the foot of the mountain [at New Braunfels]
during the night , rode on with his horses in the morning, his
daughter wept and followed alone after the wagons. Ujhazi
moved on with his people towards San Antonio ." Seele's poem
commemorated the event.
In the east the sun dawns red,
Encased in a thick blanket of fog .
The mist rises and falls on the reddish light
And flees to the west as balls of cloud.
What means the ringing of bells there
And the trampling of horses along the road?
So early that timidly the cows stand
At the corral and turn toward the sounds.
Now there arises a mighty cloud of dust ,
A troupe of horses approaches at high speed,
And riders come flying .
49
They fly like a storm over the waves of the sea,
Then, in a flash, they again turn back
To him, who with an old man's solemn glance
At a slow, deliberate pace
Rides after the troupe.
The beard flows white around his face,
Ill, tanned in the sun's rays,
And over the brow, filled with sublime thought,
Is seen on the hat the [red] feather waving.
Straight ahead the staunch hero looks
To the west, where over heaven's vault
The sun will in a wide arc
Have advanced by evening to its rest.
He well thinks that, like it, he
Will find there in the west the place
Where the star of freedom will shine
And, after the battle, beckon to rest.
The bold column has rushed past;
There follows, as migratory birds in flight
Are often followed by a straggler, tall in the saddle,
A noble woman, a woman that weeps!
From her eyes fall tears
Down upon the horse's mane.
Oh tears, fall like flowing iron
Into that bloodhound's tiger heart
[the Austrian emperor]
Searing it, that from your wounds
It may never more recover,
Into the heart of him who banished them
From their dear fatherland,
That they know to be enslaved by him!
Bon voyage, you horsemen!
Bon voyage, you hero!
You noble lady! In the New World
Be granted to you, you mourners and maiden,
Freedom, home, happiness, and peace. 33
50
The arrival ofUjhazi and his family in Texas marked the begin­ning
of a recognizable Hungarian presence in the state. Throughout
his remaining years there, Ujhazi and his family attempted to adapt
to the land. He also participated in local politics, maintained correspon­dence
with other exiles and his relatives in Europe as well as with U. S.
government officials, and sought to surround himself with a small Hun­garian
emigre community. A staunch democrat and citizen, he sided
with the anti-slavery faction in San Antonio, thus placing himself in
opposition to prevailing social and political sentiments in Texas. He
also attempted to preserve something of his former aristocratic lifestyle
in Hungary, planting a vineyard of cuttings from his ancestral estate
and treating his friends to hunts with his imported dogs. At first the
family stayed in a hotel in San Antonio and , on September 11, were
serenaded by a local German singing society.
Two years later, on July 16 , 1855, Ujhazi wrote to his daughter
Pauline, who lived on her estate of Hazsina in Hungary, that the family
had stayed in "strange quarters" in San Antonio for more than a year
while their two-room frame house was being renovated on his land
on Olmos Creek near the crossing of the Old Nacogdoches Road. He
wrote, "Until that time, living in a tent, we took turns with the boys
to protect the cattle . . . . Our small land lies near San Antonio . The
location was worth the higher price because of its closeness to the city."
The Ujhazi farm included three 50-acre fields. They and an adjacent
pecan grove were enclosed with fences . Across the creek to the east
rose a stony ridge called the "Lorna del Chilpetine" (now part of the
city of Alamo Heights). 34
During that first autumn in San Antonio, Ujhazi's horse herd
was stolen. After chasing the horse thieves for two weeks into the Hill
Country north and west of San Antonio, Farkas, assisted by a Mexican
herdsman and Ujhazi riding in a wagon, found the horses, which had
been sold singly or in pairs to local farmers. The recovery of the horses
cost Ujhazi $200 for rent on the wagon and horses and the fee for the
people who had bought his horses from the "Mexican thieves." He
observed further that "riff-raft" lived in the neighborhood of San
Antonio and that he would have preferred living 15 to 20 miles away
"where there is more rest and quietness ." 3)
In November 1853 Ujhazi began purchasing additional land
next to his property, which eventually totaled 550 acres along Olmos
Creek, surrounded by rocky hills and rolling prairies. He named his
51
estate Sirmezo and planned to rebury his wife's coffin on a hillside facing
east toward his homeland. On the same hillside he planted a half­acre
vineyard enclosed by a rock fence. 36
Ujhazi anxiously anticipated the arrival of supplies shipped by
his children in Hungary. The crates were filled with engineering tools ,
Hungarian books to educate his youngest son, LaszI6]r., bottled wine,
two small glass boxes of soil from Budamer, and other such items. In
return , the Texas family sent exotic souvenirs to their relatives in
Hungary, including a coconut, sweet potatoes, nuts, flower seeds, coco­nut
spoons, an American washboard, two Indian tobacco pouches, a
"tiger" skin hunting bag, two Indian whips, and an Indian needle and
thread holder, all packed in moss. J7
During his first years in Texas, Ujhazi registered his cattle brand,
UL (for Ujhazi Laszl6, the traditional Hungarian form for names) at
the Bexar County Courthouse. In this way he sought to protect his
cattle, which grazed freely along Olmos Creek in the vicinity of the
headwaters of the San Antonio River. 38
The family moved into their house at Sirmezo on March 1, 1854.
An older frame house had been refurbished with much expense and
labor, with the addition of two stone chimneys, floors, windows, and
doors . The rooms, including the kitchen, were paneled, and the yard
was fenced in and covered with gravel. Near the house was a well house,
servants' house, chicken house, and corral. During the following year
they fenced their fields, digging 1,200 postholes and nailing 36,000
board feet of lumber (with 600 pounds of nails). Because he did not
own the 20 acres on which the house stood, it took Ujhazi more than
three years to acquire title to this part of Sirmezo. In addition, he
continued buying land, especially that already encircled by Sirmezo,
paying $1,500 for the final 57 acres, which lay on a shady hill facing
eastward "toward our unhappy fatherland ." There, in the autumn of
1856, he buried the remains of his wife under a large and spreading
live oak tree . J')
On his journey through Texas in the mid-1850's, Frederick Law
Olmsted visited Ujhazi at this farm and recorded:
About four miles from San Antonio we passed the stock
farm of Mr. Ujhazy [sic] , late governor of Comorn [Komarom] .
We stopped a few moments to pay our respects and were very
cordially received. He had but recently entered his new log-house
and was hardly yet established .... He had moved by the long
52
inland route to Texas, driving his herd of valuable mares through
the friendly Indian country and camping nightly with all his family
while on the journey. He had spent some time in looking over
the State and finally purchased a large tract of land here, on which
he was now making a new home. His wife having died during
his residence in Iowa, he lives secluded with his faithful daughter
[Kliira], the very picture of a staunch, hale old gentleman, who
supports with quiet dignity what fortunes the gods have decreed.
He finds the climate here not to differ greatly from that to which
he was accustomed in Hungary and thinks it more salubrious than
that of Iowa.40
During the first year at Sfrmezo, Ujhazi reported that he had
ten cows, eleven calves, 20 horses and colts, and an assortment of other
domestic animals , including his favorite dog, Hollo (Raven), which
he had brought from Hungary. In addition, he had beehives, plows,
and other farm implements (brought from Iowa), and other tools for
carpentry, masonry, and gardening. He learned to sow corn by hand
from the American neighbors and noted: "The American farmer is
an unusual creature. The day before yesterday, I plowed and sowed.
Yesterday, I had to write an article for the newspaper, and tomorrow
I am going to clean my boots because I am going to the city." 41
In describing his life at Sfrmez6, Ujhazi wrote to his daughter
Pauline that 14-year-old Laszlo Jr. (Laci) had been enrolled in "the
school of the Jesuits," which was far superior to others in San Antonio .
In fact, his son attended St. Mary's College, established by the Brothers
of Mary from France in 1852. Ujhazi said that he had "suppressed my
antagonism toward priests and monks" because the school offered
English, French , German, Spanish, sciences, mathematics, physics,
geography, and history. Ujhazi was anxious that his youngest son obtain
a good education. At the same time, he also contemplated sending
Laszlo Jr. to learn the saddlemaking trade from Benjamin Varga, "a
Hungarian man who works here." 42
Ujhazi described his daily routine in July 1855, writing that
he arose at dawn and brought out the horse and wagon for his son
to drive to school, where the Brothers provided a shed for the rig during
the day. Laszlo Jr. milked the cows while Klira prepared breakfast.
The boy then left for school at 7: 00 a. m ., delivering milk to a local
military camp along the way. He took his noon meal at school and
began his return journey of four miles at 4 :30 p .m. Once at Sfrmez6,
he milked the cows again. Ujhazi went on to report:
53
Our ranch is beautiful and fertile-I think I picked it right­if
the usual drought would not torture us during the summer.
The corn thinned out, and caterpillars got into the corn. One day
last week, while Laci was in school and Klari [Klara] in the city
to buy pots, I went to sell the hay. While Farkas read on the porch,
a few cattle, following the dried-out creek, came up to the garden
and destroyed my carefully planted, ... registered melons. I was
very depressed because probably all the melons added together
would not have as much moisture in them as the sweat that
dripped from my forehead while cultivating them.
Ujhazi also described the local poisonous snakes (water mocca­sins)
in the dried-up Olmos Creek as well as the rattlesnakes, one of
which had gotten into Klara's room.
The late 1850's were drought years in Texas, and the Ujhazis,
whose fields had just been cultivated, suffered. Writing to his daughter
in August 1855, he thanked her for sending $2,250 from his estates
in Hungary and said, "We need the money badly because the drought
is incredible. Even the older folks don't remember such heat. I, too,
got hot from the sun while I was loading the haystack and I fainted."
His son Tivadar sold hay in San Antonio during that year. Ujhazi's
favorite three-year-old horse, Villam (Lightning), was stolen, but local
officials recovered it and asked Ujhazi for a $10 reward as a prize as
well as to cover their expenses. He went on to tell that
Along with our great deal of loss we had some profit, too .
My land tolerates the drought better than others, and the cattle
recognize that. Wherever they come from, they end up on my
land . When the owner comes, he can take them, but if nobody
looks for them, which is quite common, I will brand them during
the winter. The law permits it. In the beginning, I just looked
at these as kinds of gifts, but now I am smarter. I immediately
start using the intruders, and let my own cattle rest.
In the same letter Ujhazi said that the men of the family had
"successfully completed a tremendous job." They fenced Sfrmezo's fields;
otherwise they would have had to guard them day and night against
foraging cattle . The family then had a feast since Klara had killed a
large turkey, and Ujhazi obtained a couple of bottles of red French
wine in San Antonio. He said, "This is the way the Hungarian peasantry
of Texas feasted, happy that the labor of the future will not be exposed
to the destruction of the cattle ." 43
54
Ujh:izi's son Tivadar tried to help the family fortunes, for he
had asked for his maternal inheritance and borrowed from his family
to become partners "with a yankee and open a store in the city [San
Antonio]." Unfortunately, the unidentified "yankee" went to buy mer­chandise
for the store in New Orleans and did not return, leaving
Tivadar bankrupt. Ujhazi said, "He escaped back to here" since he
did not wish to remain in the city and be hounded by his creditors.
Thereafter Tivadar sold hay and produce from his own cows and chick­ens
for cash. Although his father and brother loaned him money,
Tivadar, in Ujhazi's words, was "completely gone ." Although Ujh:izi
hoped that the local military commander could find employment for
Tivadar, he wrote to his daughter in July 1855 that "things are getting
very difficult, because the years go fast, and the sympathy toward the
Hungarians disappeared a long time ago. This is no surprise because
many behaved very badly." In the end, Tivadar was forced to auction
off his wagon, horse, and the remainder of his possessions in Texas. 44
In May 1856 Ujh:izi wrote to his daughter Klementine (Mrs.
Gusztav Fay, who lived at Nyustya, Gomor County, Hungary) that
he had been ill for two weeks and incapable of writing but had recov­ered.
In his letter he informed his children in Hungary that he wanted
to divide his Hungarian estates, freed by an amnesty from the Austrian
government in that year, among his eight children in exchange for
$6,000, "for my survival in America." He planned a trip to meet them
in Switzerland to complete the gift, asking that the expenses of such
trip be paid equally by his children in Hungary. It was two more years,
however, before he could make the journey. 4 )
Meanwhile, Ujh:izi's daughter Klara finally married Joseph
Kellerschon, the son of the German farmer who had bought Ujhazi's
preemption of his New Buda farm in 1853. Two years had passed before
30-year-old Joseph could follow her to Sirmezo. They were married
on August 18, 1855 . Thereafter they remained at Sfrmezo, Klara keep­ing
house for the men and Joseph working with Farkas and the others
in farming and cattle raising. In those next few years they had two
children, a daughter named Tini and a son named Gyula U ulius]. The
reaction ofKlara's family to her marriage was mixed. Farkas and some
of the relatives in Hungary were outraged because Joseph Kellerschon
was neither Hungarian nor of the nobility. In addition , he was less
educated than his wife. Yet Ujh:izi blessed the marriage, fearing that,
at his death , his daughter would be unprotected in a foreign land .46
55
Not all of Ujhazi's attention was focused on his family and
farming problems. Local and national politics interested him, and he
informed his family and friends in Europe of the issues and candidates
of the presidential election of 1856 in which James Buchanan defeated
John C. Fremont. As the slavery controversy heated up at all political
levels during the 1850's, opposing sides became even more divided
and uncompromising. Interests of Northern workers conflicted with
those of the slave owners of the South. As an abolitionist living in
a Southern state, Ujhazi watched the anti-foreign Know-Nothing Party
in Texas and San Antonio and reported on the burning of abolitionist
Adolph Douai's San Antonio Zeitung office by a mob in 1856. Even
the mayor of the city was attacked, defended himself, and killed his
opponent in a gunfight. German and French immigrants then protected
the local jail in order to prevent the mayor's lynching. It was a time
of "tremendous excitement in the city." 47
At the same time, the severe seven-year drought continued to
plague Central Texas, and Ujhazi became restless. In October 1856
he wrote Klementine that although a partial amnesty had been declared
by the Austrians and many former rebels were regaining their estates,
"I will never ask for any kind of clemency." In February 1857 he wrote
to his family in Hungary that the drought continued with no rain for
five months and that cattle from as far away as 15 miles came to Sirmezo
to drink. "Sooner or later, we will have to have some rain, and therefore,
we are in a great hurry with the plowing. . . . We started plowing
at the beginning of February, and since that time I am following the
plow in a shirt and pants." 48
The drought continued unabated in Texas during much of
1857. On August 10 Ujhazi wrote:
In 20 days it will be one long year that neither rain or even
dew brought a little life to suffering Nature .... On hills , in
the meadows, and on the land, everything is dead , and a yellow­brown
picture meets the eyes, almost blinded by the continuous
clear sunshine.
The daily, regular southeastern wind, which in previous
years brought relief and cool, now became the burning hot wind
of the Sahara since the soil, which is burned out like a brick, picks
up the reflected heat of the sun and brings it into every nook and
corner of our house through the doors and windows. We can
hardly stand it in the daytime and cannot sleep during the night.
56
Ujhazi went on to say that his garden was being destroyed by
starving rabbits, who chewed their way through the mosquito nets with
which he covered his favorite melons . Finally he was forced to chain
two of his dogs in the garden to protect the family's food supply. 49
In February 1857 Tivadar Ujhazy (who, with his father and
brother Farkas, had become a u.s. citizen on April 7, 1855) requested
an American passport in order to return to his native land . Never suc­cessful
in Texas, he depaned Sirmezo on March 27 , accompanied by
Laszlo)r., who traveled with him for the first day and then returned
home. Tivadar sailed from Galveston for Germany, where he had to
wait at Hamburg for travel funds from his sister Klementine Eiy and
for Austrian permission to enter Hungary. He later married , farmed
at Pusztahit, and died of typhoid in 1870. ~o
Laszlo Ujhizi also continued his own plans during the fall of
1857 for a trip to Europe and described a proposed route to Switzerland,
avoiding New York, London, and Germany. He said of those ptaces,
"I hate New York, anyway, as well as the life in London where every­thing
is hypocritical and misleading. I never liked the life of high­society
people, and now I like it even less since I became a peasant
[farmer] of the desert [Texas] eight years ago." He sailed from the port
of Indianola to New Orleans and then traveled by steamship to Le
Havre . The journey lasted about 35 days and included calls in Cuba,
Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, and the Madeiras . He remarked that
the climate of the latter islands was pleasant and the landscape beauti­ful,
and that the wine was superb in the Canary and the Madeira islands.
From Cidiz, Spain, he planned to travel by way of Le Havre to Paris
and then to Geneva to meet his children. ~l
Before leaving Texas, on August 4,1857, Ujhizi gave Farkas
his power of attorney. More than a month later, on September 10,
Ujhazi wrote his son-in-law, Kiroly Nagy, that he was ready to depart
Sirmezo for the journey. He said, " . .. on August 8th the fountains
of heaven opened, and Nature started a new life . Man, animals, and
plants got a new lease on life when they hardly had any hopes ."
On December 2 he wrote his daughter Pauline Nagy from
Geneva, announcing his arrival:
I am sorry that I, who traveled thousands of miles with great
trouble to get closer to you , am unable to make the final few
hundreds. But, as long as our country suffers under the yoke of
57
the tyrant, however sweet some consider this imprisonment as
tolerable , for me it is neither tolerable nor acceptable, and never
will be. So I only came to the mountainous country of Switzerland,
which is the closest among the free countries ." 52
Although Helen, who was afraid to confront her father, and
Pauline , who was pregnant, did not accompany others of the family
from Hungary to Switzerland, a reunion was held that winter. Upon
her return, Klementine Fay wrote to Pauline that the tearful reunion
found Ujhazi "just as active and determined as he always was." His
appearance had not changed, she wrote:
. .. as if he had spent his time in Budamer with quiet farm­ing
and hunting and had not broken the soil of Texas or cut forests
in Iowa. Perhaps it is so because seven years ago when we separated
he already had a long white beard, and with his small stature he
looked like a very old person rather than only a fifty-year-old man.
In Geneva the family completed the division ofUjhazi's Hun­garian
estates and discussed family problems, including plans to send
Lasz16]r. from Texas to Switzerland for his university education. They
also decided that Helen Madarasz, now living in Hungary abandoned
by her husband, Vilmos, would accompany Ujhazi back to Texas with
her sons, Ladislaus Wand Bela. In Texas Farkas would assume the
duties of guardianship over her and her children. 53
Following the family gathering in Geneva, Ujhazi stopped in
the German states to shoot quail with a new rifle . He then waited in
Hamburg from mid-March until mid-May for Helen and her sons to
arrive from Hungary and for Tivadar to bring him Hungarian hunting
dogs . Meanwhile, he made arrangements for Pauline Nagy to buy
Helen's half of the estate at Hazsina, which they jointly shared in the
division of his lands in Hungary. Pauline was to pay Helen 15,100
forints (two forints equaled one dollar in 1858) over a period of three
years, so that she would have money to settle in Texas.
Ujhazi purchased only one ticket for Helen's passage on the
steamer which left Hamburg for New York on the 1st and the 15 th
of each month. His son-in-law Vilmos Madarasz, having squandered
his inheritance, meekly came to Hamburg with Helen, but Ujhazi was
determined that Vilmos would not accompany the family to America.
In a conversation between the two men, Ujhazi casually proceeded to
clean his new rifle, load it, and take a practice aim . How Vilmos inter-
58
preted this is not known - when Ujhazi lowered the weapon, the young
man had disappeared and did not return. Later Ujhazi mused that
"if by accident I had suddenly remembered that, at the last moment,
he had made my unfortunate daughter pregnant again, I don't know
whether I could have resisted pulling the trigger." But the old patriarch
had forgiven Helen, observing that "her mind is quick and fertile; only
her horizon is narrow, and [she 1 remains still childish."
While he waited at Hamburg Ujhazi received a letter from Texas
in which Farkas reported that the devastating drought continued and
that the "locust[ slate everything, melon harvest, garden [and 1 grapes.
After the drought, the locust[ s l; what is bringing upon us the curses
of Egypt?" When Tivadar, with the dogs (agars) and money, arrived
in Hamburg on June 10, Ujhazi wrote that he had great plans for the
dogs in Texas, where he would breed them to hunt rabbits on the
prairie. "The fast-running hunting dog is practically unknown" in Texas.
Ujhazi with his daughter and her sons finally sailed on the Borrusia
from Hamburg on June 15 .
The Borrusia crossed the stormy Atlantic Ocean in two weeks
and arrived in New York onJune 30, 1858. Ujhazi and his family then
rested at the farm of Mrs. Louise Ruttkay, Kossuth's sister, for nine
days before continuing on to Texas. From New York City they sailed
to Savannah, Georgia, where they boarded a train to Montgomery,
Alabama. The next leg was by river steamer to New Orleans, and the
last was another sea voyage to Indianola and Lavaca on the Texas coast,
the nearest point to San Antonio.
On August 10 Ujhazi reported to Pauline from Sirmez6:
A few days ago we arrived at the permanent station of our
life and our post from which I doubt I will move away in my life­time.
Our journey was difficult and unpleasant, full of misfor­tunes.
The Atlantic Ocean in June is always cold and stormy. On
the other hand, from New York, we traveled in constant stifling
heat, especially from the seashore of Texas to here [Srrmez6] .
We spent nine days in New York, which means that we
also spent that much money taking care of our customs, mails,
and financial affairs and looking for a ship which would bring
us cheaply closer to Texas. I shipped the luggage of Uk a [Helen]
and the wine on a separate sailboat, which goes much slower but
carries the goods much cheaper to Lavaca, the last seaport.
Ujhazi went on to describe their route, saying that their money
was so depleted they were forced to take "a very bad ordinary mule
59
wagon" for the final leg of the trip to Sfrmezo. The greatest tragedy
of the journey was the death ofB€la, Helen's infant son, who became
ill and died in Galveston . Ujhizi wrote that "I could not bring my
dead grandchild, the beautiful little Bela, to the land of Texas where
our graves are multiplying ." Although the family wanted to bring his
body to SfrmezQ for burial next to Ujhazi's wife, the summer heat forced
them to bury him in a small cemetery at Lavaca.
Ujhazi found that local conditions had changed little during
his absence. Although newspaper reports had promised "shining and
encouraging news ... about the crop of Texas this year," he found
that locusts had destroyed the first planting, and although his children
had replanted, the crop did not live long because of the lack of rain
during the summer of 1858.
The four hunting dogs given to Ujhazi by his children during
his visit to Europe survived their trip to Texas. Called agars, which some
have translated as "greyhounds," in all probability the dogs were
Hungarian vizs/as, smooth-skinned, brown pointers which excelled in
hunting birds and rabbits. A yellow dog, Hfres (Famous), had been
stolen at Lavaca during the trip, something Ujhizi very much regretted
because so much labor and money had been spent on him. Ujhazi
planned to breed the hunters, sell some, and amuse himself hunting
in the neighborhood. 54
In addition to occupying himself with the hunting dogs, Ujhazi
also brought a large store of Hungarian wines from Europe to San
Antonio. During the fall and winter of 1858, a local firm, Groesbeeck
and Smyth, advertised a "choice lot" of Hungarian wines for sale, in­cluding
such labels and types as Pesti, Nussberger, Ruszti Bor, Ruszti
Bor 1822, Szekszardi, Budai, and Budai 1846 as well as Som16i, Tokay
Maslas (Mazsolas), and Tokay Aszu. In addition, the liquor importers
also stocked Hungarian Hock and Stein wines for local consumption.
Though Ujhazi's name was not mentioned in the newspaper in connec­tion
with these wines, it is likely that he was responsible for their appear­ance