Saturday, May 7, 2011

Surname Saturday - Gulyban from Hungary

As I work my way through my surname list I have come to the name Gulyban and its various spellings. The Gulyban line I am researching originated in the county of Borsod, Hungary.
It is from Northeastern Hungary. Ellis Island records show 45 Gulyban arrivals between 1893 and 1923. There are many more when "creative" spelling is used for searching. The 1920 federal census lists 54 Gulybans born in Hungary. Again this does not include alternative spellings such as Gooban.


Wikipedia provides the following information: Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén (Hungarian pronunciation: [borʃod ɒbɒuːj zɛmpleːn]) is the name of an administrative county (comitatus or megye) in north-eastern Hungary (commonly called "Northern Hungary"), on the border with Slovakia. It shares borders with the Hungarian counties Nógrád, Heves, Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg. The capital of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county is Miskolc. Of the seven statistical regions of Hungary it belongs to the region Northern Hungary. Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén is the second largest county of Hungary both by area (after Bács-Kiskun) and by population (after Pest County). 40% of the land is arable. Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén is one of the most geographically diverse areas of Hungary. It lies where the Northern Mountains meet the Great Hungarian Plain, thus the northern parts of the county are mountainous – with some of the highest peaks and deepest caves in the country –, the southern parts are flat.

Augustinus Gulyban, my immigrant, came to the United States in 1905 at the age of 15. As many others had, he went to stay with friends or relatives until he got his feet under him. He settled in eastern Ohio like many Hungarian immigrants and worked in the coal mines. Gus, as he was also known, enlisted in the US Army in 1917 only to be rejected 3 months later as an enemy alien. Gus was naturalized in 1918.