Mark Bennett: Hungarian community hopes marker lets all experience its history, culture

Sep. 18—Maybe a few Hauteans will try cooking chicken paprikash for the first time.

Perhaps they'll pick up some cabbage rolls when Terre Haute Hungarian Hall on North 22nd Street conducts one of its drive-through dinners.

Or, better yet, they'll do both, while also feeling a sense of appreciation for the blue-collar work ethics, cultural influences and sense of teamwork the community of Hungarian immigrants contributed to the city after coming here in the early 20th century.

Those possibilities accompany Saturday's dedication and placement of a new Indiana Historical Marker at 24th Street and Maple Avenue commemorating Terre Haute's Hungarian immigrant community. More than 70 people turned out for the ceremonies under cool, cloudy skies.

The driving force behind the marker project — California nurse practitioner and Terre Haute-born Hungarian community descendant Laura Loudermilk — said she hopes for the historical marker "to honor my immigrant grandparents, but at large to honor their journey, which is representative of the group."

As many as 44 families of immigrants from the Eastern European country of Hungary settled on Terre Haute's north side in the early 20th century, and worked jobs at factories such as Terre Haute Malleable and Manufacturing, Wabash Fibre Box, Columbian Enameled Steel Ware, coal mines and other employers. The immigrants also operated churches, stores and taverns.

"It's important to keep that history alive," Mayor Duke Bennett said at Saturday's ceremony. "Many times, those things just fade away, and we can't let that happen."

One of the Hungarians' prime achievements was "providing a source of labor to help the city's manufacturing and general businesses that support the community," Kathy Miller, the Hungarian Hall treasurer, said before Saturday's event.

Miller's parents were born in Hungary. Her mother's family came to America in 1926 from the Hungarian town of Timisoara, now a part of Romania. Miller's father's family came to the U.S. in 1909, settling in South Bend and living in an apartment contained within that Hoosier city's own Hungarian Hall.

"That's why I feel a dedication to the Hall here," Miller said.

Terre Haute's Hungarian Hall was founded in 1909, and it's purpose transcending serving as a hub of activities for immigrant families. The Hall also rallied funds, space and supplies for funeral wakes and burials of the neighborhood's needy residents.

Hence, the Hall's official name — the First Hungarian Working Men's Sick and Death Benevolence Society.

In her quest to get the Indiana Historical Marker Program to approve a marker honoring Terre Haute's Hungarian community, Loudermilk deeply researched the neighborhood's history through public records and those provided by the Hall's history-minded volunteers. She discovered the enclave included 452 Hungarian immigrants in 1910, according to that year's U.S. Census.

A decade later, Loudermilk's grandparents — Frank and Julia Koos — came to Terre Haute after leaving Hungary. Frank constructed three houses in his new city's neighborhood, worked the coal mines in Universal, farmed land on Rosedale Road and operated with his wife Julia the Koos Grocery & Meats Market at 24th and Maple.

"Unofficially Koos Corner," as Loudermilk put it Saturday, is the site of the new historical marker.

More than a century later, the Hungarian community still has a presence, though diminished, through descendants and the activities of the Hall. The brick building and its events spaces are the site of rummage sales three times a year (two are upcoming on Nov. 4 and 11), those cabbage-rolls-drive-through dinners (the next one is 4 to 6 p.m. Oct. 7), and smaller get-togethers like this Sunday's bacon-fry. The latter involves attendees cooking "greasy bread" — bacon prepared over an open fire, and dripping its juice onto bread topped with tomatoes, onions and peppers.

Sixty Hall members have Hungarian roots, but at least a dozen others are "social members" without such lineage but still interested in the community's history and activities, Miller said.

That cultural history includes the aforementioned chicken paprikash, a dish featuring the tender poultry meat in a paprika sauce.

Funds from the events, which include rental of the Hall to the general public for weddings and parties, support the facility, along with donations. New members, with or without actual Hungarian ties, are also needed and important, Miller said.

She praises Loudermilk's passion for getting the historical marker recognition and its significance.

"I think it's wonderful. This is its time to mark that spot and the neighborhood and recognize the whole Hungarian community," Miller said Thursday. "Laura has done a remarkable job."

The blue and gold roadside markers have been placed by the Indiana Historical Bureau for more than a century, Jill Weiss Simins of the bureau's Indiana Historical Marker Program, said Saturday. More than 700 have been placed throughout the state, including now 22 in Terre Haute.

The latest is the first such marker to focus specifically on a Hoosier Hungarian community.

The community's history is rich but also involves tenacity in the face of discrimination the Hungarian immigrants faced during World War I, which pitted their homeland against the U.S. and its allies. Many of those same immigrants later sent sons and fathers to fight for America in World War II.

The immigrants persevered and supported each other, people Loudermilk called "our courageous brethren."

"Though this marker stands small in the universe, it stands large in our legacy," she said Saturday.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.