Our Romanian & Transylvanian Family Roots (Pt 2)

Resita_Map

This is a very long post, so please bear with me!

Our “Fleger” family line emanates from modern day Rescita, Romania (see red flag in the map above – click map to enlarge). That is the location from where this line left Europe to come to Cleveland, OH and begin a new life here in America. In a prior post (see here) I explored the history of this region of Europe at the time the family emigrated, which was in 1903-1904. At that point in time the region was under the Austria-Hungary Empire:

… the Austro-Hungarian Empire in English-language sources, was a constitutional union of the Austrian Empire (the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council, or Cisleithania) and the Kingdom of Hungary (Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen or Transleithania) that existed for 51 years from 1867 to 1918, when it collapsed as a result of defeat in World War I.

Emphasis mine. I found it very intriguing in the prior post that the region of Romania where the “Fleger” line is from was at one point part of the Princedom of Transylvania. As was outlined in other prior posts (see here and see here) the “Fleger” line is actually comprised of at least three biological surnames, none of which is “Fleger” (Joseph Fleger was my great grandmother’s second husband, who adopted her children from her first marriage).

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Our Romanian & Transylvanian Family Roots

The Corvin Castle (also known as Hunyad Castle) in Transylvania

Updates At The End

This is a follow-up to a previous post extending our family lineage deep into Romania. This post explores more about our ancestral homeland and what events drew our family to America early in the 20th century, specifically to Cleveland, Ohio. So let’s begin with where the last post left off – the locations in Romania our family lines come from.

There are three family names which we traced through Romanian marriage records to specific cities or towns in modern Romania:

  • Herczog: From Tirol (Romanian), also known as Kiralye-Kegye (Hungarian) and Koenigsgnad (German). The family used the Hungarian variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Hungarian roots.
  • Naszt: From Lugoj (Romania), also known as Lugos (Hungarian) and Lugosch (German). The family used the Hungarian variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Hungarian roots
  • Hollendschwandner: From Valiug (Romanian), also known as Ferencalva (Hungarian) and Franzdorf (German). The family used the German variant in their marriage certificate, possibly indicating Germanic roots.

Lugoj Tirol is located in the Romanian County of Timis, while the others are located in the Romanian County of Caras-Severin. All three lines converge in Rescita, Romania where all the marriages took place from which we traced back the family “origins”.

The following map lays out these four locations in modern day Romania (click to enlarge):

Rescita_Lugoj_Valiug_Tirol
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