Hungarian American - History

History

Europeans have long settled in the New World, with Hungarian Americans such as Michael de Kovats, the founder of United States Cavalry, active in the American Revolution. Hungarians have maintained a constant state of emigration to the United States since then; however, they are best known for three principle waves of emigration.

Agoston Haraszthy, who settled in Wisconsin in 1840, was the first Hungarian to permanently settle in the United States and the second Hungarian to write a book about the United States in his native language. After he moved to California in 1849, Haraszthy founded the Buena Vista Vineyards in Sonoma (now Buena Vista Carneros) and imported more than 100,000 European vine cuttings for the use of California winemakers. He is widely remembered today as the "Father of California Viticulture" or the "Father of Modern Winemaking in California."

The first large wave of Hungarian emigration to the United States occurred in 1849-1850 when the so-called "Forty-Eighters" fled from retribution by Austrian authorities after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. During the last decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, the United States saw an immigration boom primarily of Southern and Eastern Europeans, among them approximately 650,000-700,000 ethnic Hungarians. Unlike the educated classes who formed the core of the 1849 wave, the second Hungarian wave was mostly poor and uneducated immigrants seeking a better life in America.

An increase of Hungarian immigration was also observed during the Second World War and The Holocaust, a significant percentage of whom were Jewish.

The circumstances of the third wave of emigration had much in common with the first wave. In 1956, Hungary was again under the power of a foreign state, this time the Soviet Union, and again Hungarians rose up in revolution. Like the revolution of 1848, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution failed and led to the emigration of 200,000 "56-ers" fleeing persecution after the revolution, 40,000 of whom found their way to the United States.