The Extinction of the Elefanthy

 This website was begun with an article about the genealogical relations between the Klebercz and the Elefanthy families; in those inexperienced days I also placed the title of the essay to be the url of the website – which it remains to this day. You can read this essay here. And for additional heraldic material, here.

In it I mentioned that the Elefanthy became extinct in the 17^th century; a belief begun in 19^th century Hungarian genealogy. The most important and revolutionary book ever written about the medieval Hungarian nobility, by Erik Fugedi, took the Elefanthy as its focus and it, also, assumed that this family died out in the 17^th century.

A more recent study of the Nitra county nobility published the discovery that a line thought to be extinct in the 15^th century survived until at least the 17^th – but the historian’s researches ended there.

All the published genealogical sources maintained that this family died out – so my shock and surprise was great when, after a relatively simple search through parish records, it became clear that the noble Elefanthy survived in their ancient seat until at least the late 19^th century. What is doubly shocking is that a noble family of this exceptional standing can be so easily ‘forgotten’, and attests to the pitfalls of relying on the writings of professional historians, who with a single stroke of the pen often write out the fates of living individuals.

I traced intermittently the Elefanthy in Nitra from the 18^th century, but since the records are difficult to read I will not reproduce them here. Instead, I will pick up from the early 19^th century – where I managed to reconstruct a family tree of the Elefanthy of Elefant from 1815 to 1875.

Francis Elefanti, a military captain, baptized his son George in Stropkov in 1815. He is certainly the Ferenc Elefanty who wrote a book entitled "Hungary in 1848" (published in Budapest in 1848), recollecting events during those revolutionary days. Because of his involvement in the Revolution, he emigrated to London, where he was private tutor to his distant kinsman Alexander Apponyi, later famous for donating his exceptional library to the Hungarian nation. I assume that Francis may be the brother of Martin Elefanthy; his line were noble landowners in Preselany (Pereszleny), an estate adjacent to the villages of Upper and Lower Elefanth, the medieval cradle of this family. It is worth noting, however, that Preselany was a royal donation to the Elefanthy family in as early as the 13th century, along with many other estates in Bratislava county.

Martin had a son, Anthony, born in 1828, and a daughter, Emilia, born in 1836. This Emilia was in fact baptized in the church of Upper Elefanth, where the family was living at the time, or perhaps went to baptize their child in their old former lands. Emilia later married Joseph Ray, a nobleman, lawyer and later judge in Nitra county.

The brother, Anthony, married Aloysia Gregory and in 1848 baptised their first child, Etelka, again in the parish church of Preselany. The family then moved to Trnava (Nagyszombat), an old free city in Bratislava county, and in 1850 had a son, Alfred.

Etelka seems to have had an interesting life, for in 1875 she gave birth to an illegitimate child, baptized Mary. Their uncle and aunt Joseph Ray and Emilia Elephanty were the godparents.

It should be mentioned also that the family members are all identified as ‘noble’, living in or near the old estates, and having as godparents the most illustrious and wealthy nobles of the county (Jezerniczky, Majthenyi, Ocskay, etc). The Jezerniczky, out of interest, actually owned the Elefanthy family castle in Lefantovce for quite some time in the 19th century. Both Anthony and Martin Elefanthy of Pereszleny are on a 1847 register of the nobility of Nyitra County. So the idea of some ‘fraudulent’ Elefantys is out of the question. It also accords with the otherwise paradoxical existence of Alexander Elefanthy of Elefanth (1822 - 1896) (szentjanosi es elefanti Elefanthy Sandor), who held the important post of mayor of Jaszbereny in the late 19th century. Official biographies all confirm his descent from the noble Elefanthy, a branch of which came from Nitra to Jasz county in the 18th century.

Alexander Elefanthy of Elefanth and Szenjanos - 1886, by Geza Polgary

 
On the basis of the research, a small family tree of this branch can be reconstructed:

The Elefanthy can also be traced to Bratislava county, in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. For instance, in 1679 in Trnava again Ladislas Szegedy, a local nobleman, was the husband of Elizabeth Elephanty. As a matter of fact, that same page in the parish record mentions Andrew Klebercz, who was married to Elizabeth Maylath. This is rather a coincidence but does furnish proof of their close ties.

During the end of the 17^th and beginning of the 18^th centuries, Tomasov (Fel), a village in the Senec district and thus adjacent to the Klebercz properties, a Catharina Elefanty lived with her husband Michael Ravasz and had several children. The Ravasz were also local landowning nobility living in Fel.

All this demonstrates that, in today’s world, private research often yields unexpected results and unearth surprising discoveries. Hopefully this could be an example to many private genealogists worldwide.

Réthe and the Reformation

The local historian Ferenc Cseplo romantically called Réthe as a “bastion and a shelter”. This village, later called Réte in Hungarian and Reca in Slovak, was indeed something of a beacon for Protestants, Hussites, Brethren, Calvinists, and generally those who did not share the Catholicism of the absolute rulers of the House of Habsburg.

By the 17^th century, most of the Hungarian nobility was Protestant; the individualism and particularism that reformed faith offered was compatible with Hungarian notions of freedom of conscience and personal will. A small number remained Catholic, and these few families later went on to reap the rewards and became the image of the wealthy magnate. In the 1680s, however, the absolutist Emperor Leopold banned all protestant churches in Hungary, with the exception of certain places. Réthe was chosen as one of only two of these ‘articular’ places in Bratislava County, no doubt a great triumph for the local nobility. From then on, the village became a kind of centre for Protestantism in the region.

An important part of Protestant history in Hungary was the uprising of Francis Rakoczi II, Prince of Transylvania and Hungary, in the early 18^th century. Uniquely, the Réthe nobility formed a hussar unit in support of the uprising, led by their colonel Gyorgy Réthey. This last, and most famous, uprising naturally failed, and thus the Hungarian nobility sunk even further into obscurity.

Probably the most intriguing aspect of Réthe and its Protestant past was its sheltering of religious exiles from Bohemia and Moravia. After the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, the old kingdom of the Bohemian crown soon became a Catholic absolutism. The original Czech nobility, mostly Protestant (either Lutheran, or Calvinist, or one of the ancient Czech sects), was forced to either convert or be sent into exile and completely expropriated. The majority chose exile and expropriation.

About 30 families of this origin settled in Réthe, and as all exiles they were miserably poor and wretched. Most were Moravian Brethren, who were descendants of the originally medieval Hussites.

One such immigrant family is however noteworthy since it, to some degree of success, blended into the local Hungarian nobility. The Pomichal family has its ancient origins in the German duchy of Pomerania. In the 14^th century, the Order of the Teutonic Knights granted estates and land to the family of Hirsch von Pomeiske. They seem to have been a typical knightly family, keeping order in the pagan Prussian provinces – they had to provide two mounted knights to the Order. The family coat of arms was the ancient clan arms of Hirsch uber schach, a blazon worn in altered form by many of the oldest Pomeranian noble lines. Later on the family dropped the Hirsch, and one of its members, Nikolaus Alexander von Pomeiske, was a cavalry general under Frederick the Great in the 18^th century.

However, in the late Middle Ages, a branch moved to the Bohemian crown lands; their predicate became garbled, and they became known as Hirsch von Pomischel or Pomyschel (which means to ‘blend’ or to ‘think’ in Czech and Polish, and eventually it ceased to be a predicate but a surname). Indeed, in 1616 the brothers Paul and Isaac Hirsch of Pomischel received a confirmation of their arms by the Emperor Rudolf in Prague. The Hirsch uber schach arms are carved into the 17^th century tomb of a member of the Pomischel family in Markvartice, of which they were landowners.

One of the extant (out of the four) medieval manors of Markvartice. One of these belonged to Gottfried Leopold Hirsch von Pomischel auf Freudenberg (now urban part of Markvartice), which he inherited from the ancient Luttitz and Hofer von Lobenstein families.

In 1614, Elias Hirsch von Pomischel is recorded as being the captain of Reichstatt (today Zakupy), a large fortress and base of the powerful Protestant Czech magnates the Berka of Dube. During the 30 years war, in 1632, the fortress was lost to Catholics and the Berka were banished from the kingdom, presumably along with their retainers and captains. 

 It was presumably then that the family name warped into ‘Pomykal’ or ‘Pomikal’, as the modern commercial arms image shows. The family spent many yearsin the region of Skalicza in Hungary, near the Czech border, apart from the royal towns also in the largest community of Czech exiles in Sobotiste. In the late 18th century, Janos Pomikal settled in Rethe. From the available family tree, it is clear that members relatively quickly became well-off: all three sons of Janos Pomikal, who lived in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, married into noble Hungarian families; one to the Cseh of Reca, and two sons to the Klebercz of Reca families. More interestingly, during the first half of the 19^th century the family eventually changed their surname to Pomichal; since ‘ch’ is unknown in the Hungarian language, the only explanation is that there was an attempt to revert to the earlier diction. A branch in Rethe inherited and adopted a coat of arms with the elephant (from the Klebercz family) and the lion.

Through marriage and land ownership, the Pomichals became Hungarian nobles in their own right – though probably without any confirmation of this from the Habsburg king, making their position permanently precarious.

Karatsony von Hodos Coat of Arms and Family Tree

 

 The greatest pleasure from this blog is to receive both questions and answers from people from all over the world. Questions are naturally more frequent, and so is my embarrassment when I find it very difficult to answer them. Less frequent are when a descendant of a family I have mentioned in my blog appears with some never-before-seen material. It has happened a couple of times before (to mention the Fadgyas grant of arms, for instance, or the Urbanovics seal).

I was particularly pleased to receive an email from a descendant of the Karatsony of Hodos family, now living in Romania (although the spelling of the name has been as usual very flexible over the centuries, I shall use the most common academic appellation throughout this article). At first it was an image of the Karatsony coat of arms, without any text: clearly a cheeky reference to my earlier post on the family (see here), in which I insisted that an ‘official’ coat of arms for the Karatsony of Hodos does not exist. Clearly I was wrong. The Karatsony coat of arms, as one can see, embodies the typical Hungarian noble attributes to its very extreme. Its lion (crowned, as a special mark of nobility), grasping a sabre, and its crest of an arm holding the same is quite enough to represent the heroic credentials of a Magyar warrior. The inclusion of not one, not two, but three severed Asiatic heads, however, appears gratuitous in the extreme. Very rarely does Hungarian heraldry indulge in quite such sadistic aesthetics, but it is certainly memorable. It must be added that members of the Karatsony family did use coats of arms with slightly different charges – hussars etc. It is the same family – it just shows the flexibility and imagination with which Hungarian noblemen approached their personal and family insignia. The family legend is that the lion in the shield is a Cuman lion, while the three severed heads represent the three men whom the Karatsony ancestor killed to defend the King of Hungary.

Even more interesting however is the complete family tree of the Karatsony: from its very beginnings  until the 20^th century. Although genealogical literature considers Blaise Karatsony (Karachon Balas in the tree) as the founder of the dynasty, and was mentioned in 1279 in a manuscript by Ladislas IV of Hungary, the family historian has added several other early medieval individuals, including Blaise’s father and grandfather, as well as great-grandfather. I am not sure whether this is conjecture or is based on medieval documents. Whatever the case, a very interesting element is the attempt to equate unusual names with modern Latin of Hungarian ones. So Chepan, apparently the earliest known ancestor (roughly from 1200 to 1279), is translated as Istvan. Even more interestingly, the name of Karachun, which was a first name and only later did it give the family its surname, is equated with Gratian. The latter name did have some currency in that period, since Gratian’s Codex from the 12^th century is the central collection of canon law used in the medieval period. It would, however, be surprising that the clerks writing the manuscripts, who were without exception educated in church establishments, and who had pretty adequate skills in writing medieval Latin, would scramble such a famed name into a form such as Karachun. 

The family tree shows two main branches which survived into modern times; they were set up by Miklos and Janos, the sons of Gyorgy, mentioned in 1380. The line of Janos stayed in Hodos, their original feudal seat. It is probable therefore that Janos was the senior line. However, this original Hodos line died out around 1650, as the tree shows. The other line, that of Miklos, married into a Rethe noble family: his probable son, Gyorgy, married Ilona Markus of Rethe in the 16^th century. This marriage was the beginning of the Karatsony in Rethe, and in fact the origin of all subsequent members of the family.

From this important point the tree follows the fortunes of Karatsony family lines: some which stayed in Rethe; one line moved to Kecskemet in the 18^th century, with Adam Karatsony, who was a reformed rector. His descendants, variously moved to Budapest, or even Kesmark (Kezmarok), and have been followed to the 20^th century.

Another line, that of Istvan (born 1833, married to Urbanovics Rozsa), moved to Budapest and Levoca/Leutscha (Janos).

The second major line to have separated from the main Rethe family is that of Andras, who in the 17^th century married Mariska Hegyi of Hegy, and moved with her to Puszta Fodemes (today Puste Ulany, a village in the Senec district). This branch became prolific and later moved into various counties. Their marriages became far more prestigious than the local county nobility from which they had sprung, and their spouses included the following families: the Podhradszky de Podhragy, a medieval family from Trencsen county; the Sandor de Slavnicza, a family of magnates who later achieved the very rare title of Prince; the Thurzo de Nositz, who included eminent scholars; the Burian de Rajecz, who provided a foreign minister for Austia-Hungary during World War I; and the Mocsary de Bocsar, an illustrious family who descends from the 13^th century Count Bocsar – members were magnate landowners, took part in the Wesselenyi Magnate Conspiracy, the Rakoczi War of Independence, and Lajos Mocsary was one of the most important Hungarian politicians of the entire 19^th century.

 hodosi Karacsony Sandor, 1898, Hosszufalu

The line of Sandor (born 1810 in Puszta Fodemes), survived to the present day and lives in Romania. Notable of this line is another Sandor (born 1865), who rose to become the Royal Chief Forestry Advisor of the Kingdom of Hungary. The descendant of this line, Eliana Tipurita, apart from very kindly allowing me to see the family tree, has also sent a photograph of Sandor Karacsony de Hodos, took in Hosszufalu (Glanzendorf) in the district of Brassov (Kronstadt) in Transylvania in 1898. The descendants of this line settled in Romania, where after the fall of the monarchy they became Romanian citizens.

Prikkel Family Coat of Arms

 

A very smart 19th century rendition of the Prikkel coat of arms. The armed lion was the symbol of the medieval nobles of Reca, descended from the castle knights of the early Arpad times. This armed lion has survived as the heraldic emblem of a few Reca noble families, though almost every noble family who owned land, lived and married in Reca for a significant period of time was in some way or other related to this medieval origin.

Urbanovics of Sárfő and Réthe

The seal of Franciscus Urbanovics of Sárfő, showing the characteristic raven coat of arms (image taken from a publication on Blatne by Stanislav Fekete, kindly provided to me by Jan Urbanovic)

The Urbanovics (Urbanovits) were an ancient family of Bratislava county, whose nobility was confirmed in 1591 by Emperor Rudolf in Prague. Miklos Urbanovics, the addressee of the confirmation, was probably in Prague as part of the retinue of Prince Stephen Bocskay of Transylvania and Royal Hungary.The Urbanovics coat of arms is interesting for its motif of a raven with a ring in its beak, very similar to that of the Hunyadi family, whose most famous member Matthias Corvinus (The Raven) was King of Hungary.

The family became the most notable family in Sárfő, today's Blatne, north of Senec in Bratislava County. Andreas Urbanovics was one of the county judges for many years in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Paul Urbanovics was a prosperous nobleman, who became postmaster of Sarfo, was confirmed in his nobility in 1765 again by Empress Maria Therese, and who left a large sum to the church to create a foundation for masses.

In the 19th century, many members of this family became officers with both the infantry and the cavalry in the Austro-Hungarian armies. One of the most prominent was Aloysius von Urbanovits, Captain of the Royal Hungarian Lifeguards, the most elite personal guard of the Emperor. Being a captain in this unit carried the same honours as being a colonel in the regular army.

Elefanthy and Klebercz Family Coats of Arms

 Above is an image of the Elefanthy family coats of arms, redrawn and published in Peter Kerestes' recent scholarly volume on the ancient nobility of Nitra County (2010). The image is based on two wax seals, one pressed by Emericus Elefanthy (around 1580 - 1593), the other by Valentinus Elefanthy in 1634. Older literature interpreted the crest as a palm tree, while it is currently thought to be a crossbow. The shape of the crest was retained in the stork crest of the Klebercz family, most probably descendants of the Upper Lefantovce branch of the family (this branch was thought to have been extinct by Fugedi by 1472, but Kerestes in his publication corrects this and states that this, the other main branch of the Elefanthy, in reality survived until the 17th century).

The stork crest  is probably a later interpretation of the original Elefanthy crest, to distinguish different branches and still keep the familiar shape, because a stork with outstretched wings is very rare in Hungarian heraldry.

Vitál de Al-Szász et Magyarbél

This ancient family, often written as Vitalis, or Vitalyos, has its roots in the 13th century, as cadets of the lords of Szász. Szasz was a village in the Csallokoz in Bratislava County, and is now part of the small town of Lehnice (itself called Légh in the original Hungarian).

Nicolaus of Szasz, the direct ancestor of the Vitals, even received a grant of arms in 1416, from Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary. This makes the family as one of the first in Hungary to have received a grant of arms.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Vital family was rich and powerful. In the mid-16th century, Janos Vital married Prisca Leghy de Legh, this uniting itself with the wealthy medieval lords of Legh. Their son was Andras I. Vital, who was a King's Man (hominus regis). He managed to enter the high aristocracy by marrying Margit Nyary of Bedegh, whose family were amongst the very first hereditary barons (or magnates) of Hungary.

In the 17th century, the Vitals owned the early Renaissance castle of Laskar (picture below). The castle, rebuilt several times during the centuries, was finally demolished in the 20th century.

After the 17th century, the family never regained the position they attained previously, and they "sunk" into local landowning nobility of Bratislava County, who did not tend to own castles but only smaller and medium-sized manor houses.

In recent times, of note was Gabor Vital of Magyar Bel, who was a honved during the 1848 revolutions.

The Estates of the Hungarian Nobility (Doka Family Archive)

The relationship between land and nobility in Hungary developed in a unique way. In Western Europe, feudalism demarcated a very specific autonomy of land; lands and domains were parcelled out, to various vassals. In time, the particular domains (or estates) assumed a symbolic significance and their owners were often seen as merely representatives of the estates. This is one of the origins, for instance, of the fact that in the United Kingdom only one individual can hold a particular noble title.

Hungary never had authentic feudalism: all nobles were legally the same distance away from the king. More  importantly, it seems that the ancient nomadic ways of the Magyar nobles made land relatively unimportant to them. Only with the early Arpads did the dividing of the kingdom begin. However, the Hungarian laws of inheritance (which again seems a relic of the nomadic way of life) insisted on dividing a man’s possessions equally amongst all his children. A Hungarian noble, then, upon death, had his estate fragmented.

Indeed, the earliest documents we have of noble families, from the 13^th and 14^th centuries,  for the most part describe conflicts and family feuds over inheritance. The breaking-up of Hungary, then, begun as early as the 13^th century. The process continued largely unabated until the 20^th century, ruining the nobility with the weight of bureaucracy and administration.

Many of the families discussed in this blog came from a small number of villages – but the misconception seems that these families only owned property in those villages (or the places which formed a part of their noble predicate). Families chose to live near each other in communities – but their properties (of land) were scattered throughout the region. This scattering of small estates (one should say plots of land) is due to the centuries-old process of the fragmentation of estates; inheritance, gift, mortgage, purchases and sales.

The Doka of Reca was good example of this. It is lucky that the Bratislava archives hold the Doka family archive, as one of the very few noble archives there. It contains a wealth of materials, mostly concerned with running their scattered estates over the whole of Bratislava county, though they lived chiefly in Reca.

The Doka’s are slightly exceptional because they appeared to have managed to become rather wealthy. And though they could never pretend to be of the upper nobility (or ‘aristocracy’, reserved for the few barons and counts raised by the Habsburgs), they were an example of that wealthy and powerful noble family which formed the backbone of the Hungarian countryside.

The basis of the Doka’s landholdings was the village of Tomasikovo, in the Galanta district near Trnava. This was the possession of Stephen Doka in the 17^th century. With his marriage to Anna Foldes he gained the domain of Kosse (a now lost locality in the region). The family conducted many feuds over this land with the locally dominant Esterhazy family.

The man who really changed the family’s fortunes was Michael Doka, living at the end of the 18^th and first half of the 19^th centuries. His two marriages, lucrative county posts and intelligent purchases of property he added to the family landholdings portions of Reca, Csataj, Opoj, Dudvah, Bustelek, Horne Janiky, Puste Ulany (Puszta Fodemes), Jelka (Joka), as well as the domains of Borsaiz and Csandal. This became the very respectable estates from which all the subsequent generations of the Doka profited.

Michael’s son, Ladislaus (Laszlo), managed to increase the size of the Reca estates by adding to it those of the extinct (and ancient) Bornemisza lands.

When he in turn died, his son (also Ladislaus), added his wife’s inherited landholding portions of Cierny Brod (Vizkeleth) and Sasa, as well as a house and lands in Trnava (Nagyszombat).

After the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the creation of Czechoslovakia, the state confiscated the Doka’s Reca estate, because in terms of size it qualified as a ‘velkostatok’  - that is, a large estate usually owned by the aristocracy. This was in large part due to the fact that the Doka's actually leased much of their Reca lands from the compossesors - that is, the other noble landowners. In theory the Dokas were 'tenant farmers', though in effect they were noble landowners. However, the estate was returned in 1925, only to be confiscated once and for all after World War II.

The archive introduction states that the Doka family became extinct in the 1960’s – with the archive passing into state hands.

The Doka archives are rich in detail – many archies of gentry families were so, simply because of the need for land deeds and evidences of legal processes relating to property. But this post is to show just how complicated and twisted property in Hungary became, even for noble families which were very well off. Perhaps to cut the Gordian knot was a right thing. On the other hand, Slovaks have learnt nothing – their inheritance laws are still stubbornly based on Hungarian noble common law (as probably the only aspect of their ‘civil code’): forced inheritance.

Source: Bratislava State Archive: the Archive of the Doka of Reca (1351 – 1967)

The Zamolyi Family

The Zamolyis of Zamoly were one of the ancient feudal families. In the middle ages they were lords of Zamoly in Bratislava County. This locality is not to be confused with the modern village of Zamoly in Hungary, made famous today by the gypsies emanating from it to various parts of the EU. The Bratislava Zamoly was an extensive region spanning the area of three villages today, that of Jablonec, Bahony and Blatne. Zamoly as a name eventually vanished in the late middle ages to form these other settlements.

In 1416, Ladislaus of Zamoly was documented as a hominus regi, a king's man - effectively one of the king's deputies in the county. His daughter, Ilona of Zamoly, married Urban Csoka of Reca: the Hedervary family archive suggests this happened in 1479, but this is incorrect because a document exists in the Counts Karolyi archive from 1467 which states that they were already married then.

In any case, it appears that the children of Urban Csoka adopted the Zamolyi name, because it remained a name of one of the noble families of Reca, while the Csoka name disappeared soon after. The Zamolyi name was doubly adopted in history, suggesting that it was a name of some age and prestige; in the beginning of the 20th century Joseph (Jozsef) Pomichal of Reca, who in 1908 married Zsofia Zamolyi and inherited a considerable landholding, altered his name to include Zamolyi through a Royal Hungarian patent to carry on the extinguishing aristocratic name.

Below I reproduce the 1467 document from the archive of the Counts Karolyi de Nagy-Karoly. This document is fascinating because it highlights a common problem which already by then began to afflict the Hungarian nobility - the partial inheritance of land from various ancestors in various villages, leading to petty squabbles, compromises and economic stagnation. It also mentions the ancestors of some noble families I discuss here - the lords of Magyar Bel, the Fodors, and the Hollosis.

Nos capitulum ecclesie Posoniensis memorie commendamus, quod nobilis domina Elena vocata filia condam Ladislai de Zamol consors Vrbani Czoka de Rethe pro se personaliter et pro Petro filio eiusdem Ladislai fratre videlicet suo uterino ab una, partibus vero ab altera Nicolaus filius Michaelis Butya de Magiarbel similiter pro se personaliter et pro Jacobo fratre suo germano, ex utraque parte onera et gravamina eorumdem ac aliorum omnium fratrum et consangvineorum suorum in infrascriptis super se assumendo, coram nobis constituti viva voce sponte et libere confessi sunt per hunc modum, quod quia ipse Nicolaus Butya simul cum dicto fratre suo Jacobo per eandem dominam in causam attractus, sibi scilicet domine et dicto fratri suo Petro dotes et res parafernales condam domine Elizabeth filie dicti Ladislai, sororis scilicet ipsorum carnalis, consortis condam Johannis Butya de dicta Bel eidem domine Elizabeth de porcionibus possessionarus ipsius domini et mariti sui in Magiarbel Rethe et Kethweles provenire debentes ob penuriam et defectum pecuniarum solvere non potuissset, et ideo idem Nicolaus Butya sua dicti fratris sui in personis nobiles dominas Annam relictam condam Nicolai Fodor de Kethweles et filiam eius Dorotheam consortem Pauli de Fewdemes et filium eiusdem domine Dorothee Andream Hollos vocatum et alium filium eiusdem Valentinum ac filias eiusdem domine Hedvigem consortem Johannis literati de Saswar et virginem Anastasiam amicabili prece petivisset, ut pro ipso Nicolao et dicto fratre suo Jacobo prefatas dotes et res parafernales puta decem florenos auri puri hungaricales, per eundem Nicolaum ab ipsis uti dixit ad summam et (racionem) priorum et plurium debitorum suorum in impignoracione quarumdam porcionum possessionariarum in dicta Kerthweles mediantibus alys literis impignoraticys habitarum computando et accumulando plene perceptos, cum effectu prefate domine Elene et fratri eius Petro expedivissent et persolvissent, quapropter de dictis dotibus supranominata domina Elena nominibus quibus supra prelibatos Nicolaum et Jacobum Butya, deinde iamdictos dominas Annam et Dorotheam et Andream ac Valentinum simul et Hedvigem atque Anastasiam heredesque et posteros eorum utriusque sexus universos quitos et expeditos commisissent et per omnia satisfactos; insuper partes supradicte puta domina Elena et Nicolaus Butya similiter nominibus quibus supra de et super litibus controversys dampnis nocumentis fatigys et expensis quibuslibet inter se qualitercunque motis emergentibus illatis atque factis, literis eciam superinde quibuscunque et qualitercunque emanatis et extractis cassatis similiter quitos et absolutos dimisissent atque satisfactos, atque dimiserunt coram nobis, testimonio presencium mediante. Datum in festo beati Thome apostoli, anno domini Millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo septimo.

Church Records

an example of an 1856 baptismal church record from Reca (Boldog), noting some local noble families mentioned in this blog (Egyhazy, Molnar, Fadgyas, Zamolyi, Pomichal)

I receive a number of requests from individuals researching into their family history in Hungary, sometimes on the basis of similar or identical names that appear on my blog, and sometimes on the basis of the places I mention. Researching into family history is very difficult, and doubly so for those who do not happen to live in the country of their ancestors; and really the only reliable way to trace your ancestry (unless your family happens to be in the latest edition of the Gotha, which, on second thoughts, is not that reliable after all) is to go through archival records.

Happily, many of these records are to be found online, on https://familysearch.org/. The best way is to go on through to individual localities and villages, and browse through the individual church records as in a book. A name search is possible, but it is not accurate or reliable and in any case does not present the rich picture of changing generations as browsing does.

It is thrilling news that these records have gone online. The only shadow is cast by the fact that this was done with the resources, energy and capabilities of a U.S. religious faith-group - a source of shame for those countries, such as Slovakia, which does not honour its own history enough to attempt to do it themselves. Not to mention the positively medieval state of the archival system here. For any overseas individuals interested in your ancestry - think twice before flying over to decrepit Mitteleuropa, and browse through the internet archives first.

Lajos Udvarnoky von Kis-Joka

 Portrait of Lajos Udvarnoky von Kis-Joka, from the Austrian National Library. His family, of ancient landowners in Jelka (Joka), furnished the Empire with a number of military officers.

Fadgyas Grant of Arms

1597 grant of arms and nobility to the Fadgyas (Faggyas) family - image courtesy of a member of the von Fadgyas family

 

the surviving secret seal of Emperor Rudolph II, attached to the grant - image courtesy of a member of the von Fadgyas family

 

 Here is an image of the grant of nobility and arms of the Fadgyas (de Rethe) noble family, granted in 1597 by Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. The document is still owned privately by the Fadgyas family, which is itself a rarity.

More generally, this is a good opportunity to demonstrate the fact that a Hungarian grant of nobility (a new grant, officially), does not necessarily mean that the family in question was plebeian beforehand. The Fadgyas family, and as far as I am aware the same Fadgyas of Reca family, was newly ennobled no less than three times: in 1597, in 1634, and then in 1780. All these ennoblements were officially new ennoblements, grants, not confirmations (as far as the existing wording and documentation suggest).

Often, with many other families, repeated grants of nobility often carried new coats of arms, remarkably different from their previous insignia. This led to many historians believing that the family in question was not aware, or lost the knowledge of their previous nobility.

However, the Fadgyas grants and heraldry confirms that they were aware of their noble status, because all grants and coats of arms feature the same motif, the lily, albeit in different composition. The 1597 grant features a demi-griffon, issuing from three rocks, and holding a lily; the 1634 one features a lion rampant holding a lily. While the coats of arms of the 1780 grant again features a griffin, this time holding three lilies.

It demonstrates the fact that a grant of nobility is not proof of the origins of a noble family - another peculiarity of Hungarian heraldry and genealogy.

Count Istvan Bitto de Sarosfa et Nadasd

Count Istvan Bitto

It was usually the exception, rather than the rule, for members of the lower landowning nobility to rise up into important kingdom-wide positions of power. Their affairs and problems were of a local nature, and usually they felt satisfied with their economic and political positions in county administration. Furthermore, the upper stratas of power were jealously occuppied by the magnates, who did all they could to exclude other parts of society and to force the government of the kingdom on their (often hapless) children.

For Bratislava County nobility, the times of exceptional social climbing occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries; those turbulent times were witness to the Esterhazys, Nadasdys, Illeshazys, and Palffys rise from minor Bratislava nobility to unimaginable wealth and splendour.

In the 19th century, only a few members of Bratislava county nobility rose up high enough to join the ranks of the at most dozen most powerful men in the kingdom. One of these was Istvan Bitto of Sarosfa and Nadasd. He was born in 1822 in Sarosfa (now Blatna na Ostrove), a village the family owned since the middle ages, situated in the wealthy and fertile Rye Island (Csallokoz). His mother was Julianna Nagy, and his father, Benjamin Bitto, was viscount of Bratislava County.

As with so many members of the lower nobility, Bitto studied law and entered the legal civil service. He began his career in Moson County, adjacent to Bratislava County on its south side. Bitto was taken up in the events of 1848, and he joined the Hungarian revolutionaries. He was even made a member of parliament.

The joy did not last long. The revolution was brutally suppressed, and Bitto fled the country, returning only in 1851. He gained the trust of Istvan Deak, and thanks to him he became a member in the newly created Hungarian government, as member of the Liberal Party.

 After the compromise with Austria Bittó was the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives between 1869 and 1872. He served as justice minister in the government of Count Lonyay from 1871 to 1872. On 1 March 1874 he was appointed by King Francis Joseph prime minister. He held this office only until 2 From March 1875 when he was replaced by Baron Wenckheim. In the era of Coloman Tisza (1875–1890) he was one of the few former liberal oppositionists (he was the only Prime Minister who later joined to the opposition). From 1899 until his death Bittó was a member of the House of Magnates.

In 1875, Istvan Bitto and his wife were painted by the famous Hungarian portrait painter, Miklos Barabas.

Members of he Bitto family still live in the region of the old Bratislava County.

A few related websites

There are plenty of Hungarian genealogy websites on the internet. I thought however that I would post links to those websites which directly concern the nobility of Bratislava County.

Nemeth de Nyek Family

Csuthy de Csuth Family

Bogyay de Nagymad et Varbogya Family

Karatsony von Hodos

The name of this ancient noble family morphed many times during the centuries. The family was known as Karaczun, Karaczon, Karachon, Karachun, Karacsony, Karatsony, Karatsonyi, or Karacsonyi. The word Karacsony means "Christmas" in Hungarian, and so is a relatively common name. However, the Karacsony family of Hodos was one of the oldest in Bratislava County.

Hodos, now Vydrany, is a village in the Csallokoz in Bratislava County, and falls within the district of Dunajska Streda (Dunaszerdahely). It appears that in the earliest times it was property of the Castle of Bratislava - but as so often happened with these villages, the warriors who settled there changed into the hereditary landowing nobility. The Vermes and the Hodossy families are thought of as having descended from these original landowners, and so is the Karacsony family.

The Karacsony of Hodos had a fruitful history in the middle ages, as Ivan Nagy's Magyarorszag Csaladai testifies; plenty of names have been recorded in legal land disputes based around Hodos. Nagy Ivan records the archival mentions in 1295 of Nicolaus and Karachon, the sons of Bulchu. From then on, legal disputes around land ownership abound, involving such interesting and important characters as Nicholaus Esterhazy or the 15th century Hungarian Palatine Michael Orszagh of Guth.

Arms of the House of Orszagh, of the Genus Guth

The progression of this family from relative wealth and power to decline and loss of land ownership is a typical story of the ancient middle nobility of Hungary, which attempted to navigate the double dangers of inadequate inheritance laws and the expansive tendencies of the great magnates hungry for land.

The Karacsony family moved to Rethe (now Reca), a village near Szencz (now Senec) in Pozsony County, in the 17th century. However the family never forgot its place of origin and has kept 'de Hodos', 'von Hodos', but most frequently 'hodosi' as a predicate well into the 20th century.

Of more recent members of the family, Karoly Karatsonyi de Hodos was an infantry officer, who in 1859 received from Emperor Franz Josef a letter confirming his pensioned status, ending his career as Major in the 34th Austro-Hungarian infantry regiment the "Prince Regent of Prussia". In the 1920s and 1930s, hodosi Karacsony Sandor was Royal Chief Forestry Advisor of Hungary.

A certain element of celebrity has recently touched the family name, after Lena Meyer-Landruth won the Eurovision song contest for Germany in 2010. Her grandmother was Hanna Karatsony von Hodos, whose husband Andreas Meyer-Landruth was a distinguished Cold War diplomat. Though the gossip columns abound with mentiones of Lena Meyer-Landruth's Hungarian heritage, it may come as a surprise to some that this family is from a village in Slovakia.

As with many ancient Hungarian families, the Karacsony of Hodos never seemed to have received a patent of arms, and therefore they do not have an 'official' coat of arms. However, as all nobles, they used seals engraved with a coat of arms, almost certainly self-designed. The Karacsony seals contain typical noble attributes, such as arms holding swords, celestical bodies, or hussars.

Hungarian National Dress

It is exceedingly rare these days to come across an original, high quality exemplar of a nobleman's dress from 19th century Hungary. However, one has come up at an estate sale in the U.S.: here is the link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230735428929&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT


The jacket is of exquisite quality, in what appears like embroidered and crushed silk. Usually, national dress in the 19th century was invariably black and sober (unlike the extravagant multi-colour creations of the 18th century). The one distinguishing feature was the quality of the material - and this example is one of the finest.

Vizkelethy of Joka

The Vizkelethy de Ilka (Joka in more modern parlance) was a famous, now long-extinct family. Its origins lie in the village of Jelka, and they descend from the original medieval families which owned Jelka. However, in the middle ages the family moved to Vizkelet, a small village near Galanta, and so since then they have been known as the Vizkelethy of Jelka.

Already in the 16th century the family received no less than two confirmations of nobility. But this was only the start of their successes. The three Vizkelethy brothers in the 16th century, George, James, and Thomas, became very powerful individuals. George was the private secretary of the Prince of Transylvania, Stephen Dobo, the famous warlord. His brother James Vizkelethy became the vice-palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary in the late 16th century. The last brother Thomas (1544, died 1611 in Bratislava), was in important officer and later the representative of the Hungarian government. He also became Lord Chief Justice and vice-palatine of Hungary. His greatest achievement was that fact that in 1608 Rudolf II raised Thomas Vizkelethy and his family to the baronate. This made his family one of only a handful of hereditary Barons in Hungary in the 16th and early 17th centuries; the practice of raising Hungarian nobles to the baronate and counthood became relatively common only much later.

Thomas's son, Michael (1579, died 1648), was also vice-palatine of Hungary. With him died out the baronial line of the Vizkelethys.

Sources:
Kerekes, P.: Lexikon Erbov Slachty na Slovensku IV, Nitrianska Stolica, 2010
Siebmacher: Adels von Ungarn etc.

 

The Nobility and Landowners of Kosuty

Kosuty, or Nemes Kosut in Hungarian, is another well-known village in the Matyusfold region. It is located 5km from Galanta, and was famous for the number of distinguished families inhabiting elegant classical manor houses in the village. Below is a list of the nobles and landowners of Kosuty throughout the 19th century.

Abrahamffy


Fekete (Galanthai)

Jezerniczky

Godolle

Bottlik

Czemez

Szabados

Kiss

Szajkovits

Thuroczy

Takats (Jokai)

Telekes

Kardos

Kurtossy

Petrovics

Burian (of Rajecz - Count Istvan Burian descends from this family)

Panghy

Csizmazia

Kozma

Pitross

Vashegyi

A Noble Ending

I have noticed that there is, particularly in the US but generally in the West as a whole, a deep confusion with relation to Hungarian surnames and whether one can assume "nobility" of the bearer of that surname. I have also gotten several messages about this.

I refer to the "nobiliary" particle of Y at the end of a surname. It appears that the popular understanding of this is that both Y and I at the end of a name are territorial equivalents such as "von" in German and "de" in French; but that I denotes a non-noble from a certain place, while Y denotes a noble from a certain place.

This is, I must say, on the whole complete rubbish. There is no such rule, and both endings of Y and I are used by both common and noble families - the greatest families in Hungary had Is in their surname - Teleki de Szek, Rakoczi, Szechenyi, Ujlaki. And the Y ending is used by millions of descendats of commoners today. To cite a queer instance: the illustrious Palffy family, who were Counts of Bratislava, were called "Palffy" even before they became noble.

I seriously believe that this misconception is unacceptable, because the alternative interpretation is so obvious: that a Y or I ending is identical to the "-er" endingt in German - i.e. Hamburger, Frankfurter, and other savoury delicacies. It means from the place, and not of the place in its aristocratic interpretation.

Another misconception is that Hungarian nobles all had a Y or I ending in their name, again because the belief is that it denotes nobility. This idea comes from the old medieval land tenure, when families tended to take the place name and made it into their surname. But, as we see from the families in this blog, this is not the case. The Prikkel, Szullo, Csiba, Csorba families are older than most families of Hungarian magnates, their histories stretching back at times to the 12th century, who on the whole managed to keep their 800year old estates until the 20th century - and yet they have no Y or Is at the end of their names. Even with magnates - Count Burian, Count Bethlen, Count Thurzo, Count Tisza, Count Fekete, Count Josika, Count Forgach, Prince Kollonics, Prince Grassalkovich - these are well-known and illustrious names, and the list could go on.

What these families do have, though, is usually a territorial designation after their surnames in Latin - so for instance Forgach de Ghymes et Gacs. In Hungarian, this would be ghymesi es gacsi Forgach (note the lower case spelling for the place names). This is the real noble particle, which only nobles could ever have. Mind you, many nobles did not officially have a noble territorial designation, which of course did not make them any less noble - such as the Ravasz family.

The Royal-Hungarian Lifeguards

A member of the Royal Hungarian Lifeguards, wearing the magnificent uniform with leopard skin

The Royal-Hungarian Lifeguards (koniglich-ungarische Leibgarde) was the most elite military corps in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was founded in 1760 by Empress Maria Theresa, who, enamoured of the Hungarian nobility, decided that a select corps of Hungarian aristocrats should provide her with a guard of honour.

Membership of the Lifeguards was restricted to 120 Hungarian officers of high military distinction and blood. The role was purely honorific and representative, and members of the guards had the privilege of accompanying the Empress (later the Emperor) on festive occasions; actual protection of the monarch was not possible for many members, owing to their great age. More is to be found on the Austrian Wikipedia article: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.u._Leibgarde

In 1847, in the last list of the member of the Lifeguards to be compiled before they were disbanded in 185o due to the Revolution (but re-instituted in a slightly change form in 1867), we find in this elite corps five members, two of whom were from Kis-Joka, and three from Rethe and Senec. These are:

His Excellency the Lord Albert Udwarnoky von Kis-Joka, Major and Premier Wachtmeister of the Lifeguards and Royal Colonel

The Lord Geysa (Géza) Udwarnoky von Kis-Joka, Guard of the Lifeguards

The Lord Aloys von Urbanovics (of Réthe), Captain (Rittmeister) of the Lifeguards

The Lord Anton von Bagi, Auditor of the Lifeguards and Captain of the Royal Cavalry

The Lord Ferdinand von Klempa, Guard of the Lifeguards

In the 1844 list of Lifeguards, but not the 1847 one, we find listed Alex von Asztalos, from the Bratislava county family branches of which lived in Jelka. Also, in the 1870 Austro-Hungarian Schematismus, one Alexius von Agoston de Kis-Joka is included as a member of the Royal Hungarian Lifeguards. All in all, this is a very impressive roster for so many individuals from one village to be members of this corps.

Another interesting member of the Hungarian Lifeguards in the list is one "Lord Georg von Klapka", who joined the corps in 1842. It is none other than General Gyorgy Klapka, the most distinguished Revolutionary Hungarian general during the 1849 uprising. The Lifeguards were officially disbanded in 1850, but the reality was that by then it had not a single member: in 1849, all memberd of the Lifeguards, inspired by the revolutionary events, deserted their posts in the Imperial court to join the Hungarian rebels.

Source: Hof- und-Staats Handbuch des Oesterreichischen Kaiserthumes (1 Theil, 1847) page 127.

Also the corresponding Schematismi from 1840 and 1870.