The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 367

Book Reviews

Some readers may find it difficult to penetrate the florid oratory and rambling
sentences characteristic of nineteenth-century political pronouncements in Mex-
ico. The overly literal contemporary translations of several of the pronounce-
ments can be both confusing and amusing. Despite these minor problems, this
collection will be of interest to students of Texas and Mexican history and pro-
vides a good lead-in to the full-scale biography of Cortina which Thompson is
currently writing.
Texas Chrstian University DON M. COERVER
The Hungarian Texans. By James Patrick McGuire. (San Antonio: University of
Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1993. Pp. xi+3 12. Foreword, acknowledg-
ments, notes, bibliography, photo credits, index. ISBN o-86701-041-X.
$23.95.)
McGuire notes three major periods of Hungarian immigration to Texas. Hun-
garians first came with the adventurer George Fisher, but the first permanent
Hungarian settler was Anton Lochmar of San Antonio. Then came the "'48ers,"
political refugees from the Revolution of 1848, symbolized by Laszlo Ujhizi,
who dreamed of a Hungarian colony in Texas. Farmer, rancher, republican,
abolitionist, and diplomat, Ujhtzi tried to transplant his vision of Hungarian so-
ciety to Texas, but he and most of his children failed to adapt to the new land.
Except for one child, the family eventually returned to Hungary, carrying
Ujhtzi's remains with them. After Ujhtzi's death, the small San Antonio Hungar-
ian community assimilated into Texas society.
Other important Hungarians in Texas included Charles Vidor of Galveston,
Anton Rossler of Austin, Alexander Szab6 of Houston, and Rev. Imre Hamvasy
of Tyler. They were the individualistic pioneer generation who had fled oppres-
sion, and they adapted better than Ujhizi had. Their stories take up two-thirds
of McGuire's text.
Next came the increased immigration of the late nineteenth century. Hungar-
ians settled primarily in the cities. Prominent members of this wave included Ig-
natius Gail of Ysleta, Gustav Jermy of San Antonio, Ben Taub of Houston, and
Rabbis Maurice Faber of Tyler and Samuel Rosinger of Beaumont. The preserva-
tion of Hungarian language and culture varied from family to family, and these
Hungarians did not establish ethnic organizations.
The main reason for immigration in the post-World War II period was the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956. How many Hungarians immigrated to Texas is
not known, but in a too-brief twenty-eight pages on this period McGuire notes a
few prominent Hungarian-Texan achievements and efforts to organize Hungari-
an Texans. Unfortunately, this inadequate last chapter diminishes the book's im-
pact.
As a survey of Texas Hungarians, the principal strengths of the book are its
identification of prominent Hungarians and descriptions of their families, the
narrative to 188o, excellent research, and a pleasing style. The principal weak-
ness is the brevity of the post-188o chapters.

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