“My interest in John also developed into an interest in his family, all of them German-speaking immigrants from northeastern Torontál County (Hungarian: Torontál megye). It was the westernmost of three counties that once constituted the Banat, a little parallelogram of territory in the far southern part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Between 1900 and 1914, Torontál County was the source of tens of thousands of German-speaking immigrants who settled in St. Louis and other U.S. cities. Their migration has been mostly forgotten, omitted from the standard texts about immigration and about St. Louis.” —The Names of John Gergen, p. 6.
megyéinek kézi atlasza, 46. Courtesy of Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum, Budapest.
Immigrant Identities in St. Louis, 1903-1935 