Hungarian Living Podcast

Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Episode 54

Welcome back! This is Part 5 – of the icipici podcast on Getting Started with Genealogy. As you keep doing these assignments, you may be noticing that you are gathering some answers, but these may also be bringing some questions to mind. When you have a question, write it down! Maybe your questions have to do with why your family came to the place they settled. Why did they leave their country of origin? How did they travel? What was it like to be in a new place without extended family around?

Today’s assignment is for you to track down the full names and birthdates of your maternal and paternal grandparents. In fact, write down anything you know about them! Did they have siblings? What kind of work did they do? Did you ever meet them?

Once you start working on your grandparents and learning about their family of origin, you are starting to make connections with extended family. Are there people who are alive and in your family tree but you haven’t hardly heard a thing about them? Sometimes family members get lost when there is a death or divorce, but sometimes there are family disagreements. And, sometimes, there are situations that are so big and so unresolved that there is a permanent break in the connection. Of course, these people are still related, but there is no relationship. Unfortunately, these rifts can last for generations. Sometimes the separation is warranted. And sometimes it is just about some pride and stubbornness, and it completely changes the family structure. If you bump into something like this in your family, tread lightly but see if you can get to the root of it. If you are seeking to understand, you might get some answers. And if you want to do a little digging and reconnect, well, you might want to do that quietly at first. It may not be well received.

But, there may be some unexpected treasures in the hands of the siblings of your grandparents or their children.

Let’s say you have a grandfather and he had two siblings. It’s quite possible that photos of your grandfather or letters from him to his parents might be in the hands of the children of one of his siblings. Ask me how I know. If you tune into Episode 48 of the Hungarian Living Podcast Pictures and Old Letters you will hear about how we came upon some amazing treasures on my husband’s side of the family.

Of course, it is always tricky to be in the business of restoring family connections. But I think there can also be beauty in “burying the hatchet”. Sometimes the one who has done the offending doesn’t even know the extent of the damage they caused. And, true, they may not even care. But, it is just something to think about as you are working through genealogy things. You are bound to run into something like this in your family tree!

Be sure to check out The Hungarian Store for more resources as you explore your Hungarian heritage!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Episode 53

Today’s assignment on the Icipici Edition of the Hungarian Living Podcast is for you to track down the birth and death locations of the people you listed in Part I. If you missed that assignment, here is a link to that first podcast in this series.

Recently, I have spent time looking around for the burial plots of deceased family members and it is incredibly easy to lose track of where people are buried. It happens quickly. Of course, I have never been a big one to visit cemeteries. I’m not sure, but it might be because I have always lived quite a distance from where my people are buried.

My grandmother had seven children all together, but only three lived to adulthood. I do know the cemetery the younger four are buried in, but I guess I want to know where in the cemetery they are. At this point, they are in unmarked graves. And, since they died when they were children, I never met them. Even though burying children was common back in those days, it was never was easy. The loss of these young ones definitely left some wounds in the family even if it was never formally discussed. So, as you are collecting names and birth places and death places, remember there may be some young ones that who lived their lives before you were born. Their names and details are a part of the fabric of your family and they are important to note. Where they are laid to rest also marks where the family lived during that time and that is also useful genealogy information.

Be sure to check out Hungarian Living for more resources as you explore your Hungarian heritage! Be sure to sign up for our e-newsletters HERE!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Episode 52

Hey there! This is part 3 of the icipici series of the Hungarian Living podcast on Getting Started with Genealogy. I bet you are wondering why we are doing all these icipici assignments. Well, let me tell you. If you have are interested in getting a handle on your genealogy and you don’t know where to start, tackling these icipici assignments will help get you on your way! If you haven’t listened to parts 1 and 2, be sure to do that!

Part 1

Part 2

Today’s assignment is for you to track down the religious affiliation of the people you listed out in Part 1 of this ici-pici podcast. Click on the links above to catch up!

Knowing the religious affiliation of your people is important for a number of reasons, and particularly when you are trying to look through church records. Sometimes cemeteries are designated by religious affiliation. Sometimes knowing a religious affiliation helps understand more about the religious habits and rituals of our ancestral families. In general, the more we know about our families, the more light is shed on their lives and sometimes we not only understand them better, but it helps us understand ourselves!

Be sure to check out The Hungarian Store for more resources as you explore your Hungarian heritage!

Would you like extra assistance with your genealogy research? Check out our offer HERE!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Episode 51

Hi! This is part 2 of the icipici series of the Hungarian Living podcast on Getting Started with Genealogy. Today’s assignment is for you to track down the birthdates and death dates for the various people you listed in Part 1. If you missed that assignment, here is a link to that episode Getting Started with Genealogy Part 1.

I am terrible with birthdays. If you are the person who absolutely expects me to remember your birthday every year, I am 100% sure I will disappoint you somewhere along the way. But, knowing birth and death dates is important for genealogy work. And sometimes it just offers you interesting information. For example, my husband, his sister, and his brother each have their birthdays within a 21 day period but, of course, their birth years are different. Their births are really clustered together on the calendar. On my side of the family, I have 3 siblings. My two older brothers have birthdays within two weeks of one another and my younger brother and I were born within two weeks of one another.  Does it mean a whole lot? Probably not, but it is interesting to notice potential patterns.

When it comes to dates of death, pay attention. As you were growing up you may have noticed there was a somber time of year in your home but you had no idea it coincided with the anniversary of a death of a loved one. It isn’t unusual that there is a pattern of solemness or sadness that casts a shadow on the family during what might ordinarily be a joyful time. Noting the death dates might help you recognize a pattern you didn’t even realize was there.

And while we are on the topic of death, obituaries often contain very interesting information about the life of the deceased. Anytime you have access to an obituary or even a simple prayer card, you may find important clues to life events that will help you in your research.

Be sure to check out Hungarian Living for more resources as you explore your Hungarian heritage!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
HungarianLiving.com | TheHungarianStore.com | MagyarLiving.com

Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
HungarianLiving.com | TheHungarianStore.com | MagyarLiving.com

Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

In this episode of the Hungarian Living podcast I visit with Cindy Dobo of Dobo’s Delights, a bakery based in Piqua, Ohio but that ships around the U.S.

Check out their website here: www.dobosdelights.com 

Follow them on Facebook: facebook.com/dobosdelights

For more episodes of the podcast, check out our website: https://hungarianliving.com/podcast/

To shop The Hungarian Store, visit our website: https://thehungarianstore.com/

Check out Hungarian Living: https://hungarianliving.com/

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Episode 48 Pictures and Old Letters

Recently, I mentioned in one of our newsletters that we went to Pella, Iowa for the funeral of one my husband’s aunts. The Vos side of the family is Dutch. Don is my husband and his grandmother was born in Holland and settled in this sweet Dutch community when she was a child. She grew up speaking Dutch. She married a Dutch guy and had seven children, one of which was Don’s father. The four daughters all married Dutch guys and raised their families nearby. The three sons all married outside of the Dutch world and left the “nest”. It’s a familiar story in many families.

The Vos siblings were pretty close. So, when Don’s dad, Wilbur, died in 1964 at the age of 37, it was a shock to everyone. Don’s mom had two young children and was pregnant with the third. Wilbur’s siblings maintained a strong connection with Don’s mom and the kids and that connection continues today. They didn’t let Hilda and her kids Don slip away from the family nor their heritage. I came in on the scene in 1985. Sadly, Hilda died in 1986, two weeks before Don and I were married. In fact, the Iowa families had to make a choice between attending Hilda’s funeral and attending our wedding because they happened only two weeks apart. It was a crazy time.

I am so thankful I was welcomed from the very start. Wedding gifts were Dutch Delft blue pottery.  And then our kids were welcomed. And these aunts and uncles continued to encourage a connection within the family. When they were traveling nearby, they made a point to stop in and visit when they could. As a super special treat, they often brought delicious Dutch pastries along from the bakery when they visited. 

We love visiting Pella. It’s a great little town. Of course, what draws us there is the opportunity to visit with extended family. But, we also love the serious dose of Dutch everything that we get when we visit — from hearing the language to tulips everywhere to the Dutch last names to the windmill in town. We always need to visit the bakery to get some Dutch letters and other Dutch goodies. With so much Hungarian stuff going on in our lives, it’s easy to let the Dutch and German sides slip away, but we are determined not to. Those parts of our family’s heritage are just as important to honor.

But, we don’t get to Pella often enough, and this funeral was a great opportunity for the first cousins to reconnect. Don’s Cousin Patty brought along old family photos from her mom that had Don’s mom and dad in them, along with the grandparents. And I think it was cousin MaryLynne who brought along old letters her mom had that Don’s mom, Hilda, wrote between 1964-1971. Guys, these are amazing treasures! We had no idea that these things were out there. But, the aunts saved them and now the cousins are passing them onto us.

The funeral for Don’s aunt celebrated the life of a wonderful person. Her husband died a few years ago but we were unable to attend the funeral. Thankfully, we were able to attend this funeral and connect with a lot of the cousins. We had a great time reminiscing and catching up.

My point in telling you this story is mainly about the value of those who hold onto family members, even when their lives get complicated. Through the years, these sisters and their husbands worked at keeping us connected to the family, even if we weren’t so good at responding back to Christmas cards or didn’t get to their neck of the woods very often. And then, to have the cousins pass along things to us from over 50 years ago was so unexpected but so treasured, I knew I had to bring it all up on a podcast. I just love how this family decided to hang onto their extended family with intention.

Do you have photos or letters that the children or grandchildren of your siblings or nieces or nephews or cousins might appreciate? Do you have some things in your possession that are better served with a different branch of the family? You don’t have to give up the originals, but I encourage you to save them digitally and share them, even if they may not be appreciated at the moment. Sometimes it takes years for people to come to the space and place where they can start digging into their family history.

I have known of people withholding family history details because they found it, they worked for it, and they don’t plan to share it with anyone else. There aren’t too many good reasons to not share family history. Life throws curve balls at a lot of people and working on genealogy isn’t so easy. Thankfully, there is an amazing amount of information available these days. I encourage you to be generous with what you know and make yourself available for those who want to know more about their family history. This type of generosity isn’t costly. And it can renew family relationships that, due to distance and life’s circumstances, have taken a pause.

Check out The Hungarian Store where we sell meaningful gifts with a Hungarian focus. Please visit Hungarian Living to sign up for our e-newsletter and see all the resources we have gathered for you!

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Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

Broaden your horizons and awareness by attending the 2022 American Hungarian Educators Association (AHEA) Conference which will be held April 7-9! The conference is entirely online and it is free!

Check out the accepted abstracts in Cultural Studies, Education, History, Political Science, Language, Literature, Music, Folklore, Science, and Economics HERE.

AHEA’s website

Interested in becoming a member? Check out their affordable membership options and support a great organization!

Membership Details

Check out our podcast from 2021 where Klara and I talk more about the work of the American Hungarian Educators Association. It’s a fascinating organization! Listen here!

We love helping you discover, celebrate, and share Hungarian heritage! Visit The Hungarian Store to purchase meaningful gifts with Hungarian themes. We also have some great resources, recipes, and interesting information at Hungarian Living!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

This episode is all about Hungarian cooking and recipes and the different ways recipes get passed down. I am including this recipe my mom had written down. I love that this is a recipe that you need to weigh the ingredients! That is the most accurate way to bake.

Note: Time and temperature were not written down nor were the number of servings. When I make this, I will have to wing it a bit. But, I am not too nervous about it. All the ingredients are good. I just can’t say that I will actually produce the item the way it should look. I will have to dig through a few cookbooks and come to a conclusion. But this is a great example of incomplete information being passed down. And then, the next person has to research and improvise a little. These are important details. I doubt my mom left them off. Maybe they weren’t on the original recipe.

The important piece for me is the handwriting. That’s what I love about this recipe!

Love Letters – Szerelmes Levelek

500 grams flour
200 grams butter
5 eggs
1 lemon
½ c sour cream
300 gm ground walnuts
100 gm icing sugar
350 gm sugar for filling
1 Tablespoon milk

Prepare dough a day ahead. Crumble the butter and the flour. Add egg yellows. 100 gm icing sugar, sour cream, the juice of the lemon. Knead dough until smooth. Let it rest overnight.

On a well floured pastry board roll dough to proper thickness. Cut into rectangles. Mix walnuts, sugar, & milk. Add lemon rind (grated)

Place this filling on the center of each rectangle, fold 4 sides to meet in the middle. Brush tops with egg yellow. Bake until golden brown. Dust with icing sugar.

_________________

I will be posting the Wedding Soup recipe soon. It isn’t Hungarian but it is delicious!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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Hungarian Living Podcast — Discover, celebrate, and share your Hungarian heritage!

I have been down the rabbit hole of genealogy for the last two weeks.

My biggest weak point with genealogy is that I poke around here and there, as I have time. I don’t have a regular focused time to work on the genealogy piece. So, I dive in and then I back up and then, several months or a year later, I dive back in again.

So, here I am in the thick of it again.

If you know something about genealogy, you might categorize some of the things I talk about today as rookie moves. I will admit, I am likely the most inconsistent person out there looking into their genealogy. I have dipped my pinky toe in and out of genealogy for about 11 years. And, truly, in 11 years. I don’t feel like I have gotten any further than my pinky toe. But, I know I have. It’s just that when I open the door to a new person, sometimes it gives me so many other people to think about! And then I have to take a break because I have other things tugging at my time.

It is only recently that I have thought about the extended family in a really big way. When I was a kid, I hung out a lot with my first cousins. And then, as family things often happen, there were some family disagreements and deaths and then I went away to college and, essentially, never moved back. I got married and we lived in Nebraska, nearer to my husband’s family. Then we moved a few times more. And, I was so busy doing life with my husband and kids that I didn’t really wonder about who was beyond that. Through the years, though, I have had some contact with second cousins on one side and a lot of contact with second cousins on another side. Sprinkle in an aunt and uncle and first cousins and, there you have it. It’s a bit of a mish mash. And for no great reason other than life has a way of moving you in a direction.

So, as it is in genealogy research, one thing leads to another. I am not the one who always pays attention to details, but when I logged into Family Search the other day, I noticed that my brother and I were both listed as deceased. It came as a surprise to me, of course. I fixed those and sent a message who had put that in there. He was very apologetic about the mistake. He even thinks we are related through marriage on my dad’s side of the family.  I think it was an honest mistake – and maybe a rookie mistake. I am sure I make plenty of my own! But, you know, it was an unwelcomed step in the process. Here I am looking for great-great grandparents (and their siblings, etc) and I get stuck trying to straighten out the details of my own life. Thankfully, I was able to message the guy and he messaged back and was very apologetic about the mistake.

Anyway, I think the hardest thing for me in this research is staying focused on one branch. I feel this immense pressure to connect with the ones who are still alive. But I don’t have relationships or even know everyone out there. So, I am going to start in a small circle and branch out from there.

Some of the challenges I have run into –

Challenge number 1: I have both an ancestry account and a family search account and a my heritage account. The trees are not identical, so I run back and forth between the three. That is something I need to solve. This leads to Challenge number 2:

Challenge number 2: I need a home base for my family tree so I am only working on my part and then I can update the other sites. And, while I love having things on a genealogy website, I want it in my physical possession, too. Websites go down, computers die. I will want the info printed from time to time. So, I bought family tree maker. I haven’t done anything with it yet but I will. And soon. First, I need to catch my breath!

Challenge number 3: I have physical items and I have digital items. I have notes on the back of envelopes. Notes from my mom, in her handwriting. Documents. All kinds of things. I don’t want every physical thing I have to be digital. And I don’t necessarily want every digital thing to be physical. What is the happy medium here? For now, I have a box and I keep tossing things in the box. And, on my computer, I have a Genealogy file and I keep tossing things in the file.

Challenge number 4: I run down these rabbit holes, and I need to balance how much time I spend on the project. But, also, time is running out. What a stressor for me! I want to do all the things, but I have a limited the amount of time to spend on it. And I must prioritize my focus. Is it better to dig deep for 52 hours in a week? Or is it better to do one hour a week for 52 weeks? Or is there some balance I can find in between those two?

Challenge number 5: I see there are people out there who know some of the answers. But, like me, their engagement is sporadic. They may be down their own rabbit hole and they don’t see my message. Or something else, who knows. It feels like so much hurry up and wait. So, I hurry up and then I wait. And then I am off doing something else until I have time to “get into the zone” again.

Challenge number 6: This feels more like an untamed forest than just a tree. I can’t seem to find my way around it in an orderly fashion. Thankfully, there are some who have gone before me and cut a few paths. And, I am thankful my friend Laszlo Josa is patiently working with me as I try to discern what’s out there and what belongs in my tree. He is holding my hand until I get my footing because I am definitely a toddler when it comes genealogy. Thank you, Laszlo! You are a gem!

If you are into genealogy, what solutions have you found to the challenges I have stated? What tips and tricks have worked for you?

Some of my recent genealogy wins:

I did a DNA test and found out that I am distantly related to a guy named Jozsef. Here is the funny thing about that, he traveled with my mom to Hungary in 1997, before we knew there as any family connection! We don’t know how we are related exactly yet and we may never know because we possibly share 5th great grandparents – or 6th or 7th! At any rate, it’s definitely distant. But it is definitely very cool. If my mom was alive, she would have LOVED to have known about this.

I sent a different DNA test last week just to see if it will show anything different. Who knows? It is interesting piecing things together, even just a little at a time.

I recently found, again, a letter a guy from Sweden sent to my mom explaining how he might be related to our family. Sadly, I don’t know that he is still alive, but I am slowly wading through the waters of the 1880’s to see if there is a connection. There appears to be one! And now I am connected to  the part of the family that stayed in what is now Slovakia, but was a part of Hungary prior to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Fun stuff!

I have been communicating with several relatives – first cousins, second, cousins, third cousins. I have been asking for some first and secondhand information in order to bring a little more depth to the people in my family tree. We will talk more about that in a future episode of the podcast. In the meantime, if you are new to genealogy, start doing a little digging. Get a box for your genealogy finds and get a notebook and make a genealogy file on your computer. And start finding out the names, birth and death dates, important places lived, and the religious affiliation of your parents and grandparents. If you haven’t started yet, now is the best time! From time to time we will talk about genealogy on the podcast because it really does help round out a few things about Hungarian heritage. Remember, we can’t possibly pass on what we don’t know. Hopefully someone in your family is into genealogy – maybe you are the person!

Want to go deeper? Join us at the Hungarian Heritage Expo, or explore a heritage tour with Magyar Living Tours — built for families tracing their roots back to Hungary.
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