Amanuensis Monday: Birth Record for Salamon Deutsch - Dec 1861

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Below I transcribe a transcription from a record at Ancestry.com. No image is available. The source information says it is from FamilySearch, but the record isn't there, either. At least, not yet.

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Name: Salamon Deutsch
Gender: Male
Event Type: Szulettek (Birth)
Birth Date: dec. 1861
Birth Place: Vitka, Szabolcs, Hungary
Father: Abraham Deutsch
Mother: Sara

Source Information: Ancestry.com. Hungary, Civil Registration, 1895-1978 (database on-line), Provo, UT, USA. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

Original data: Hungary, Civil Registration, 1895-1980. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.

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Notes:

1) The database is labeled with the years 1895-1978. The year of birth is 1861. Without seeing the record, it is uncertain what record it is taken from. I am curious whether it might be a marriage record, which could have contained the names of his parents, and birth information, from which Ancestry created a 'birth record'.

2) This is my great grandfather. The date of birth matches family records, as do the names of his parents. It is nice to have documentation to back up their names. It's a shame the maiden name for the mother isn't indicated. We believe it was Weiss. My grandfather's application for a certificate of citizenship indicated his father was born in Vitka, so this is confirmed as well.

3) The existence of these records gives me hope that I may be able to break down some brick walls in my Transylvanian ancestry.

Sepia Saturday 298: Spaniels; Hungary; Carl Sandburg; and 18

Sepia Saturday - A weekly meme providing a visual prompt for participants to share their own photographs. (I'm going to share poetry as well. Follow the links for the complete poems.)

This week's image prompt was taken in 1931 outside the Vanderbilt mansion. It shows two daughters of Gloria Vanderbilt and Count László Széchenyi, along with two dogs. The dogs aren't named, and I haven't been able to verify if they belonged to the Széchenyi family. They are almost certainly English Springer Spaniels, a breed with which I am very familiar, as I grew up with several.

From left to right below: Daisy (half Springer, half Poodle); Molly; Benny


Excerpt from: "The Two Dogs," Robert Burns (1759-1796)

’TWAS in that place o’ Scotland’s isle
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonnie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.

Count László Széchenyi (1879-1938) was Hungary's first minister to the United States. My maternal grandfather, Martin Deutsch, was born in Hungary. (The town in which he was born is now part of Romania.) I visited a few of the villages of my Transylvanian ancestors back in 2012.

Below are:
1) My grandfather's birthplace. 2012. (Varalmas, Hungary; Almasu, Romania)
2) The building my great grandmother, Helen (Lichtman) Deutsch grew up in. 2012. (Margitta, Hungary; Marghita, Romania.) It served as a home, and a place of business for her family. A different family now lives there.
3) The Lichtman leather shop in earlier days. (My grandfather emigrated with his family in 1913 at the age of six. Several Lichtman relatives remained in Hungary, and of those who did, there were only a handful of Holocaust survivors.)





Excerpt from: The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg, 1936.



Now that I have returned us to the Vanderbilts, I could end the post, as I don't have any connections to the Vanderbilts to discuss.  (I do have a fourth cousin who shares initials with, and has been on a date with a Vanderbilt descendant, but I don't usually blog about living people. So I'll just link to the Entertainment Weekly article.)

I also have a difficult time ignoring the number '18' inscribed on the image prompt. It is a meaningful number in Hebrew mysticism. In Hebrew the letters of the alphabet are associated with numbers, similar to as if we said A=1 and B=2. The Hebrew number for 18, חי, is also the word 'Chai,' meaning 'life.'

Here's a photograph of myself, age 8, after receiving a 'Chai' necklace for a birthday gift.

Wordless Wednesday: Romanian villagers dancing the Hora

1938. Photographer: John Phillips 
Villagers dancing the Hora in the hills near Cluj, wearing traditional peasant clothing and headscarves. (source)

Themeless Thursday: Random Jots

1) Analytics

Here's a graphic illustrating the number of visits this blog has received from July of 2009 through May of 2010. Sure, I could have waited a month to do this. But I also knew my mind was going to be elsewhere in a month. I started using Google Analytics 11 months ago. I like the information it provides me. Some of you may notice I cut off the Y-axis. Without the Y-axis I realize no one else will be able to compare their number of visits to mine. But I do find my temporary increase in visitors during the month of October 2009, as well as a more lasting increase after January 1 and April 1 of 2010 to be interesting, at least to me.

The top five most popular pages in the past 11 months (except for the main page):

1) Poetry: Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed
2) St. Louis Snow Event of 1982
3) Poetry: Copy-Change - Where I'm From - George Ella Lyon
4) St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries
5) St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries - and other area newspapers

The popularity of those two poems I posted in August and September of 2009 is what drove the increase in visits in October 2009. They were part of a "Poetry Friday" series I stopped in November. I'm glad the other three pages are historical/genealogical in nature.

I highly recommend Google Analytics for anyone interested in tracking how many people are visiting their blog/website, and why.

2) The TITLE attribute

Moultrie Creek Gazette has an HTML-centric post on how to use the TITLE attribute with the ACRONYM and ABBR tags. Some bloggers and website designers may be interested. I don't use the ACRONYM and ABBR tags much myself, as I like to define meanings parenthetically (like this). However, I use the TITLE attribute a lot. With the IMG tag.

In this code

<img src="filename.jpg" title="Mouseover text">

The TITLE attribute provides the text that appears when you move your mouse to bring the 'cursor' arrow over an image. Move the mouse over any image in this post to see what it looks like.

It's good to use the TITLE tag with images, as many screenreaders used by the blind will read the text, so the blind user will at least know what appears in the image.

UPDATE:  I received an email from someone having difficulty with this, and I realized that Blogger (and likely other software,too) creates some code for images that might look more confusing than the code I put above.   Here is the code for the photo below:

<img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiaTQaIvDA56lOO16B4cF3dZJCpcq_4XZx1ACS99BpFaWb1kphaNkj2JjTn8hj05C9PrqwqNjPmGAqL7visgy54X7VsQWJULnO3MUNqhD0iT2mvJbNUGFguF0h36PS3Bs6OhqGPrRV/s400/TurdaCanyon.jpg" title="A breathtaking image of Turda Canyon nearby Turda, Romania." width="300" />

The most important thing to remember is not to add any brackets, as I don't believe the order of the attributes matter.  As long as each attribute follows the AttributeName="AttibuteValue" format.  I tend to put the Title Attribute at or near the end of the list.

3) Another photo of Turda

Turda, Hungary (now Romania) is where my great great grandfather, Abraham Deutsch, lived. (I posted another photo I found of the area yesterday)

Turda Canyon (Photograph by CameliaTWU)

The idea for the title of this post came from GMSV (Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Wordless Wednesday: Turda, Transylvania

A transcription project I might join....

JewishGen announced this morning:

We have exciting news for those who are researching the Transylvania region of Hungary, as well as those who are interested in preserving our heritage.

We have recently acquired a considerable number of register images from Bihar county, formerly in Hungary and presently in Romania, which contain around 12,000 to 15,000 records of births and marriages from this region.

As you probably know, these records have been inaccessible until a few years ago and are not available on films from the Mormons.

These records primarily include Nagy Varad (Oradea), Er-Mihalyfalva (Valea lui mihai), Margitta (Marghita), and Elesd (Alesd), as well as those of several smaller towns and villages in the region.

They are seeking volunteers to help transcribe. My Deutsch ancestors were from the neighboring county of Kolosz, so they won't likely be in these records, but my Lichtmann ancestors were from Margitta.

Poetry: The Forest -- Emilius Buczi

This is my first entry in the Great American Local Poem Genealogy Challenge being hosted by West in New England.

In Google Books I found Poetry of the Magyars: preceded by a sketch of the language and literature of Hungary and Transylvania, translated by John Bowring, 1830.

Inside I found a poet named Emilius Buczi who was born in Kolosvar, Hungary. Kolosvar is today known as Cluj, Romania, and is nearby the town of Nagyalmas/Varalmas where my maternal grandfather was born.

Bowring wrote in his introduction:

Buczi is a native of Kolosvar—his poetry is of the classic character, which has grown out of his great devotion to the writers of Greece and Rome. He was professor of rhetoric at Nagy Szeben (Hermanstadt), but ill health compelled him to abandon his chair, and to retire for some years to private life. On his recovery he was appointed to the professorship of moral philosophy at Karoly Fejervar (Karlsburg), which occupies him at this hour.

In the below poem the author writes about what may be a local forest.

The Forest
by Emilius Buczi.

Deep in the stillness of the solemn forest
Peace sings her hymns of solitude, Apollo !
While the light zephyrs, listening to the music,
Glide along slowly.

Through the green boughs what friendly spirits vibrate
Round the old roots what gentle streamlets murmur !
Brightening with influence full of joy and beauty
Life and its struggles.

I, when I look upon those lovely meadows—
Streams full of light—and hymn-impassioned songsters—
Forests and flowrets—feel that woe's oppression
Smites me no longer.

Shades of the forest! to your calm recesses
Pride never wends, nor passion. When the branches
Of your green trees are fluttering in the breezes,
Bear me their freshness.


Below you can read it straight from Google:

Some Words

The last two Wednesdays I have posted for Wordless Wednesday photographs received from a first cousin of my mother's. There was no writing on the back of the photographs and the cousin was unable to identify them. However, they were with other photographs of Deutsch and Lichtmann kin, so we are relatively certain (no pun intended) they are from those family lines.

This means they are likely from a region of Transylvania that was then Hungary, and is now Romania. (Though it is possible they are relatives post-immigration to America.)

Here are the faces of the two men:

It is my understanding that both the Lichtmann and Deutsch families were Orthodox Jews. And the individual on the right looks like traditional images with which I am familiar. Not so the individual on the left.

The head covering the relative on the right is wearing appears reminiscent of what I sometimes see Hasidim wear. The relative on the left appears to be wearing a more 'cowboy-style' hat to me. Though it may just be the way the hat is turned.

Even more interesting than the hats, is the facial hair, or the lack thereof.

With the spread of kabbalism to Eastern Europe, trimming the beard was gradually prohibited by leading rabbinic authorities (Noda bi-Yhudah, Mahadura Tinyana, YD 80) and with the rise of Ḥasidism, the removal of the beard became tantamount to a formal break with Jewish tradition. [Source]

Not growing up in an Orthodox household, and used to 20th and 21st century changes in tradition, this difference didn't occur to me until I pasted their faces one next to the other. My Great-grandfather, Samuel Deutsch, also didn't have a beard. This may be representative of a generational break with tradition, as if the two pictures are from a similar time period, the individual on the right appears older.

The woman in last week's photo is holding a book.

I wonder what the book is. While such movies as Yentl have ingrained in popular culture the idea that Jewish women in Eastern Europe were discouraged from education -- it has been suggested recently that paradoxically, the restriction from reading religious literature resulted in women reading secular literature, and becoming key players in the latter half of the 19th century enlightenment. (The law of unintended consequences strikes again.)

I'd like to be able to put some names to these faces someday. Perhaps similar pictures will turn up in other cousin's collections, but with labels.

Amanuensis Monday: The Accident in Transylvania

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue transcribing the tape my grandfather, Martin Deutsch, and his brother, Ted Deutsch, recorded in 1977. Back in October of 2007 I posted a couple entries describing a horrific accident that claimed the life of one of my grandfather's brothers back in 1908 or 1909. In my description, I included brief transcriptions from the tape, though I summarized much of it. The full transcript follows.

Recently I learned of an alternate version of the story with some dramatic differences. I'll discuss this below the transcript.

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45:00

Martin: August 24, 1977 and we just finished the other side of this tape and got through with what we think is the place or the area where we came from near Cluj or Kolishvar and I think we might start on another subject. Possibly to decide how we came from there – how did we come. How was it decided. How was it arranged. There’s quite a story in that background. I was about five and a half years old, I think, when I came around. You were ten.
Ted: I was 11.
Martin: You say you were 11. You say you were born 1902?
Ted: Yeah
Martin: I was born in 1907. Anyway, there were several months in there where the differences make up the one odd extra year, I guess. To start with, before we come away, I think its important to establish how many were there in the family. There were actually six kids. Six kids.
Ted: Well, let’s see. There were five boys, no four boys and two girls.
Martin: And of course father and mother. The seventh in the family was of course born in the United States. That’s how it arises. But before the six there were seven in the family, until the accident, which I think we may as well cover that now. What was the basis of that accident? Ed and the seventh member of the family born there. Armin A-R-M-I-N? Is that what you would call it?
Ted: Yeah, Armon, A-R-M-O-N.
Martin: A-R-M-O-N? You say A-R-M-O-N?
Ted: Yeah.
Martin: And how old was he? And where did he come in?
Ted: He was two years older than I.
Martin: He was two years older than you, so he might have been born in 1900?
Ted: 18…yes. About 1900.
Martin: In that case, do you think that Jean was born before him? How long? Was she the oldest?
Ted: Jean was the oldest, and she was born about 1899.
Martin: I think that would establish it as 1899 although there is some thought that it should be 1900. And I’m not sure just what happened there.
Ted: Because mother and father were married in 1898.
Martin: 1898?
Ted: Yeah, so she was born in 19…1899.
Martin: It probably is true because they sure didn’t miss any periods inbetween to get seven kids.
Ted: That’s right. Armin must have been born in 1901 or 2. No.
Martin: He could be 1901
Ted: 1901
Martin: And Jean could be 1900, but it would have to be a stepped up operation to get it done.
Ted: 18 months.
Martin: Yeah. Well, anyway, when that accident happened, I don’t recall the details of it. Do you have pretty good…
Ted: When the accident happened I was only I would say about six years old
Martin: So I would have been between two and three years old.
Ted: But I recall the accident because I was involved in the accident.

50:00

Martin: You were involved.
Ted: I was there at the time. And I saw.
Martin: You were the oldest one there?

[note: Armon was the oldest, if their sister, Jean, had left with the parents.]

Ted: Yeah, that’s right. It happened that Dad always carried a gun when he went out of the village. He carried a gun with him because you travel through the mountains
Martin: Highway robberies
Ted: Not robbers, but
Martin: Hunting
Ted: Protection. Not not hunting, Protection from wolves.
Martin: Animals.
Ted: There are wolves around when you cross the mountatins. He always had a gun
Martin: A revolver. A pistol.
Ted: A revolver or handgun. For protection. Not from robbers, but he did run into wolves. Wolves run in packs and you never know when they will attack you. Especially if you camp at night.
Martin: I wondered about that and how a gun got into the house.
Ted: If we camped at night, if we camped he always kept a fire going, but he always had a gun also.
Martin: So it’s wolves you were mainly afraid of. The wolves were around there for
Ted: Plenty of wolves around.
Martin: Goats and Sheep, were there a lot of sheep there?
Ted: Yes there were a lot of sheep in the mountains. So this day he didn’t go very far, he left the gun at home. When he left his home he had a chiffonier. And in there he locked up the bread and locked up any other stuff the kids might take. And his gun. So he forgot to lock it this time. We were there, Armon and I. And I think somebody else, but I don’t recall.
Martin: Ed?
Ted: Ed was there.
Martin: I suppose I was there too.
Ted: You might have been there too. Ed was there, and Armon. So Ed. I went to the Chiffonier. It was open so I went to get the bread. If it was locked we couldn’t get the bread, but if they left the key open, we’d go in and look for bread.
Martin: Something to nibble on
Ted: Yeah, so we found a gun in there. We didn’t know what the hell it was. I thought it was a plaything. Armon was older than I and I don’t know if he knew what it was. But he wanted…he took it away from me.
Martin: He was older
Ted: And showed it to me. And then Eddie got it, and he was looking at it. He thought it was something to whistle in because the barrel was there, and if you blew your breath in there you could whistle.
Martin: I see
Ted: So he tried to whistle into it.
Martin: Oh, into the barrel
Ted: Yeah, he held it up against his mouth like that and suddenly the damn thing went off and it went through his upper jaw and through his nose. It came out thorough his nose.
Martin: I see. I wondered how that all happened. I see now from your explanation.
Ted: That’s exactly what happened. He wanted to whistle. What the hell did we know about it? Anyhow. Because Armon was the oldest and
Martin: taking care of him
Ted: he was supposed to know better. But what the hell did he know. seven or eight. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. So he got scared because Ed was bleeding and there was no doctor around there to take care of it. Nobody knew what to do. Anyhow, after awhile, Dad and Mother blamed him, and he got scared and he got depressed that he was to blame for the entire thing.
Martin: Depressed and distressed and afraid I suppose
Ted: Afraid and for a couple of weeks he wouldn’t eat properly.
Martin: Do I understand he hid out somewhere where he wasn’t
Ted: He hid out where nobody
Martin: Where nobody could find him.
Ted: He was depressed in every way. He wouldn’t eat right. Finally about a month later he passed away.
Martin: That’s really something
Ted: He was just scared. He was just scared stiff. It actually wasn’t his fault.
Martin: He died of fear or something like that. It wasn’t his fault other than he was afraid he’d be blamed. He was blamed.
Ted: Eddie, Luckily he wasn’t hurt much. Its
Martin: It’s amazing
Ted: He always had a spot around his nose where it came out.

55:00

Martin: It’s an amazing accident the way it happened. It went through his upper palate and through his nose and out.
Ted: He didn’t take the thing in his mouth, he just pointed it this way where you’d blow into it.
Martin: Oh, yeah
Ted: That’s the lucky thing. If he had shot himself in the mouth…
Martin: And it was amazing he recovered completely because actually it didn’t bother him except for a slight….
Ted: I don’t know how mother … when Mother came home he was bleeding a lot but they took care of that.
Martin: That’s amazing
Ted: That’s the story
Martin: So there were actually six of us after Armon died. I have a very faint recollection…because I was possibly between two and three years old at the time myself. I was possibly three lets say. And I might be able to have that memory about it. I remember a coffin in the house when he died. I remember that. But I don’t have any other recollection at all except a coffin in the house.
Ted: We had the coffin, and he was buried on the mountainside in a cemetery there. Buried in the cemetery over there. Of course in those days the pallbearers carried the coffin all the way to the cemetery.
Martin: For a short distance anyway, there were of course no hearses
Ted: It wasn’t more than two blocks, the entire distance.

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A couple months ago Ted's son mentioned in an email that he had heard a dramatically different version of the story. His father had told him as a child that when Eddie pulled the trigger, the bullet went through his lip, ricocheted off the wall, and then hit and killed Armon.

Two completely different versions - both originating from the same individual. Everyone in the family alive at that time is now gone, so except for the tape, everything is second-hand. About a week ago in a phone conversation my mother asked Jean's daughter for the version of the story she heard, and she recalled Armon dying from depression/starvation as well. She also recalled being told Armon had hid in a kiln, which is probably the clay oven Ted mentioned earlier in the tape, and may have only been used infrequently or seasonally.

While she corroborates the story on the tape, it doesn't explain the story Ted told his son. I can create some reasons he might have fabricated the more dramatic version. (To reinforce the lesson about how guns are not a toy; Maybe he was uncomfortable with explaining what could be considered suicide.) But these are just hypotheses.

I've created a chronological index to these weekly transcriptions I've been posting since February 16th.

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If you choose to join me in Amanuensis Monday and post your transcriptions, feel free to add a link to your post below, or in the comments.

Amanuensis Monday: A Language Lesson, Johnny Appleseed, and local villages

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue transcribing the tape my grandfather, Martin Deutsch, and his brother, Ted Deutsch, recorded in 1977. The Deutsch family immigrated to America in 1913, and the brothers are recalling their youth in the Transylvanian town of Almasu or Varalmas - depending upon whether you chose the Hungarian or Romanian language.

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30:00

Martin: I think everybody has difficulty trying to go back to really know of Hungarian beginnings and how we as a family – how did we ever get to Hungary. I have absolutely no idea and I don’t suppose you have any idea
Ted: I don’t have any idea where we came. We never touched that subject even with Dad. He never mentioned
Martin: He couldn’t explain it, I’m satisfied. Now, we do know there were ancestors, however, grandfathers and great grandfathers still in that country.
Ted: Now I remember his father, he used to come and visit us. he lived in a town called Torda TORDA. Torda. In the vicinity around there. It was past Bucium.
Martin: That was maybe 30 miles aways
Ted: And that was where Pa was born
Martin: And maybe 30 miles away from
Ted: I would say 30
Martin: From where we were
Ted: Exactly, I wouldn’t know
Martin: Now, we talked about Cluj and Kolishvar, but we didn’t live in Kolishvar, did we?
Ted: No.
Martin: Now, do you know what the closest town was, there was a town
Ted: There was a town. If you crossed over the mountains that had a railroad, it was called Hunyad, HUYAD, or something like that.
Martin: That means Great-something. HUN. You know…you’ve read about the huns in the dark ages who overran a lot of Europe and actually gave their name to the word Hungary, Hungarian. This word Hunyad sounds like a Great Hun.
Ted: It was bigger than our town, and it had a railroad stop, and if you wanted to go anywhere you had to drive your horse and wagon to Hunyad, where there was a station. And you could take the train to go somewhere.
Martin: Now would that be say 10-15 miles away
Ted: Well, I would say around that, 10, 15. It was a day’s trip. No matter where you went around that it was a day’s trip
Martin: Well, because it was mountainous
Ted: I wouldn’t know. First you had to go way up, then you had to go way down.
Martin: It depends upon how many valleys you had to cross over the mountains.
Ted: We made many trips. We made trips to a place called Margitta, where mother’s parents lived.
Martin: Now that would be MARGITTA
Ted: Something like that. Margitta. That would take 2 days or three days, it was so far away.
Martin: Maybe 50 60 miles away.
Ted: And we would have to camp on the road outside on the street overnight.
Martin: On the road…In the car (laughs) horse and buggy
Ted: On the wagon or on the side of the road. All the sides of the road had apples, we had plenty of apples to eat on the way.
Martin: There were a lot of orchards.
Ted: They weren’t orchards. They actually had apples growing along the road.

35:00

Martin: They didn’t have a Johnny Appleseed. Though Johnny Appleseed for some reason in my mind makes me think of somebody who’s a Romanian. But I don’t know where I got that idea.
Ted: Who was Johnny Appleseed
Martin: Johnny Appleseed you know was famous in this country, I think he was from the state of Iowa. He roamed the state and planted apple seeds. I don’t know what his purpose was, he thought he was doing good for the countryside for the natives to pick apples.
Ted: Maybe he --- somebody was over in Hungary too, because every road I remember they had these white little kilometer signs, so many kilometers to Margitta, and I remember the roads of apple trees along the road.
Martin: Of course some of them were cultivated orchards. Apples. I wonder how they marketed them. Of course, you say there was a railroad.
Ted: In those days of course those apples were – we had a market in our village, they’d bring their stuff to the village and sell it.
Martin: I imagine that was it, there was a public market.
Ted: We had a what they call Pizza…Pizza
Martin: Piza, for Italian, yeah marketplace in Italian I think it’s called…the word Plaza, Piazza
Ted: It’s a place. Piza is a place, that’s all it is. Going to the Piza means you’re going to the marketplace. Right there in front of the marketplace were the city village hall, the church, all the finances
Martin: Banking
Ted: In German. The financiers were not financiers, they were the police. Police department. Finances they would call them. Just like the French word for their police department.
Martin: I’m trying to think of the French word. I know it but I can’t think of it.
Ted: We would call them…they were the guys that collected the revenue, and they would call them finances.
Martin: They were part of the establishment
Ted: They represented not the village but the country…state of Hungary.
Martin: The royalty
Ted: They represented the administration, the crown, that’s right. They represented the crown…Dad, when he was cooking this alcohol, and looking at his permits, collecting
Martin: I just thought of the word – Gendarmes in French
Ted: (pause) We used to call them by the German name...That was in the Pisa
Martin: The marketplace.
Ted: The administration buildings for the village.
Martin: Probably they did have a county seat town which was Kolishvar. They didn’t call it a county, Would you have a word for it.
Ted: The county? Kolosz megye would be the county
Martin: But the word for the organization – I guess it’s similar to a county.
Ted: I wouldn’t know.
Martin: They apparently kept records of births and marriages. And they probably had records of real estate, I’m satisfied of that. They must have had some word.

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The language lesson is frustrating. The Hungarian word 'megye' means county, so Ted was able to answer my grandfather's question, even though neither may have realized it. I couldn't believe my grandfather interrupted his brother with the French word, Gendarmes, just as Ted was about to speak again about their father's plum whiskey (slivowitz). I did find it interesting that Ted associated tax collecting with the police.

Naturally, I found the discussion of nearby towns more interesting. Huedin is about 7 miles from Varalmas, and is today the nearest train station. My parents visited it on their trip in 2000. It is most likely the train station from which the Deutsch family left in 1912 and 1913.

Turda is about 40 miles from Varalmas, Bucium is about 46 miles away, and Margitta is 47 miles. I know Margitta is the correct town, as we have letters sent from there to my great grandparents after their arrival in America, and it is further confirmed by cousins. I am only guessing at Bucium and Turda, though they are nearby, and fit the pronunciation on the tapes. It's not clear from the tape whether Ted thought my great grandfather was born in Turda or Bucium.

Johnny Appleseed is associated with Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. While there is no Romanian connection I can find, the discussion may illustrate the different ages of my grandfather and his brother when they arrived in America. My grandfather was 6 when they immigrated, and perhaps would have been more 'indoctrinated' with the American mythology they taught in the Chicago primary schools than his brother, who was 11. Of course, my assumption he learned about Appleseed in his youth may be wrong. There was a series of postage stamps released in 1966, two years prior to my grandfather retiring from the postal service.

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If you choose to join me in Amanuensis Monday and post your transcriptions, feel free to add a link to your post below, or in the comments.