“All of America is our Graveyard”: The Appalachian Hungarian Experience (1880-1935)

Date: 24 February 2025 15:30-17:00 
Location: Corvinus University of Budapest, building C, VIII.

Until recently, historians and US immigration scholars assumed that Hungarians exerted little influence in the US South.  Our presentation will overturn this accepted paradigm and demonstrate that, from the southwestern counties of Pennsylvania south through West Virginia, Kentucky, southwest Virginia into the hills of northwestern Georgia, Hungarian laborers worked the mines, mills, factories, and vineyards, and with their families, helped build and sustain many Appalachian communities. 

Briane Turley is an Adjunct Professor of History at West Virginia University where he directs the Appalachian Hungarian Heritage Project. He graduated from the University of Virginia (MA and PhD).