522 Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök

I’ll write about the family of Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök after I write a little bit about the number 522.

522 = 73 + 79 + 83 + 89 + 97 + 101 which is all the prime numbers between 72 and 102.

522 is the hypotenuse of the Pythagorean triple 360-378-522.

  • 522 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 522 = 2 x 3 x 3 x 29, which can be written 522 = 2 x (3^2) x 29
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 2, and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(2 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 3 x 2 = 12. Therefore 522 has exactly 12 factors.
  • Factors of 516: 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18, 29, 58, 87, 174, 261, 522
  • Factor pairs: 522 = 1 x 522, 2 x 261, 3 x 174, 6 x 87, 9 x 58, or 18 x 29
  • Taking the factor pair with the largest square number factor, we get √522 = (√9)(√58) = 3√58 ≈ 22.8473193

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Gustáv Forgon was two years younger than my husband’s second great-grandmother, Erzsébet Forgon. They were only seventh cousins, but most likely they still knew each other quite well as they both had the same surname and grew up as part of one of the most prominent noble families in the little Hungarian village called Mihályfalva.

When Gustáv grew up, he married. His marriage record is the third record on the page below and states that his marriage occurred in 1873 on February 12. The record states that the groom was the noble Gusztáv Forgon, the son of the late noble Miklós Forgon and the noble Sarlotta Bodon. The groom was born and raised in Mihályfalva and was 25 years old. The bride was Mária Csörnök, daughter of Márton Csörnök and Zsuzsánna Miko. She was born and raised in Alsó-Vály and was 17 years old on their wedding day. Click on the record to see it better.15

The couple settled in  Alsó-Vály where they had TWELVE children born before 1896.

1st. Their first son, Ignácz Gusztáv Forgon, was born on 10 February 1875 and baptized two days later. His birth is the 5th entry on the page below. They lived in house #3 in Alsó-Vály.

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2nd. Curiously they named their second son Gusztáv when he was born on 25 August 1876 and baptized two days later. His birth is the 3rd entry on the page below.

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3rd. On 5 March 1879 the couple was blessed to have a daughter. They named her Apollónia Forgon, which was the same name as her godmother. Apollónia was christened two days after she was born as indicated on the 6th entry of the year. There is also a comment in the right margin: +1922 is all that I can read of it. It most likely indicates that she lived until 1922.

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On 10 April 1881 Mária’s father, Márton Csörnök, died. He had been very weak for a while. Her parents had been married for 42 of his 62 3/4 years.

4th & 5th. On 19 May 1881 Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök had twin boys! They named them István and Pál. The boys were christened the same day they were born as recorded on entries 7 and 8 below.

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Sadly István was very weak and died four days later on 1881 May 24. His death record is number 17, very close to the middle of the page.

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6th. Gizella was born on 11 March 1884 and baptized the next day. Her christening is the next to the last entry below.

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7th and 8th. Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök had another set of twins born on 13 April 1886. This time the twins were a boy and a girl, István and Mária. Their births are the 9th and 10th entry. Their deaths also came too early and are listed in the margins.

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This István was also very weak and died when he was only 10 days old on the 27 April 1886. His death record is third from the bottom of the page.

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Maria lived a little more than 9 months more than her twin, István, did. She died 1887 January 25 and was buried the next day. Her cause of death was listed as sínlődés. Online dictionaries were no help translating this word, but my very old and priceless Hungarian-English dictionary that a genealogist friend gave me equates the verb sínlődni and sínleni which means to be sickly, to be broken down in health, to languish. The record of her death is second from the top of the page.

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9th. A daughter, Irma, was born on 23 January 1888 and baptized the next day. She was the third baby christened in 1888.

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On 2 March 1890 Mária’s mother, Zsuzsánna Miko, died. Her death record stated that her mother was 69 years, 11 months, and 13 days old when she died. That was very important information because I could not find Márton Csörnök and Zsuzsánna Miko marriage record to learn the names of Zsuzsánna’s parents, and there were several people named Zsuzsánna Miko in the area. Now I know exactly who she is!

10th. The family’s house number changed from #3 to #4 when László was born 28 June 1890. His baptism was on 3 July as indicated in the next to last entry on the page below. I know for sure that László grew up, married, and now has many descendants.

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11th. The family’s house number is now #5. The family welcomed another little boy that they named István. He was born on 17 March 1894 and was baptized three days later as recorded on the 5th entry below. His death later that year is indicated in the margin as well.

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István died 17 October 1894 and was buried two days later. This István Forgon, age 5 months, died from weakness and was only the 15th death in the area that year.

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The record that was 3rd from the last on the same page (the 1st death record in 1895) is the death record for Gustáv’s widowed mother, Bodon Sarlolta, as it is spelled on this record. She was 72 years old when she died on 15 January 1895, and was buried two days later.

12th. Still living in house #5, the family welcomed Lajos who was born on 30 September 1895 and christened the next day. His was the 21st birth recorded in the book that year.

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To summarize I’ve made a chart showing the children born to Gustáv Forgon and Mária Csörnök from 1875 to 1895:

I enjoy using old records to piece together a family to understand some of what they went through together. Imagining their joy when they married or had a newborn baby as well as their struggles and trials when a loved one died makes them become more than just a name and a date to me. I hope you enjoyed reading about this noble Hungarian family.

487 The Forgon Family Tree

Before I write about the Forgon Family, I’ll write just a little bit about the number 487 beginning with something I learned from Number Gossip:

  • 487¹ = 487, and 4 + 8 + 7 = 19.
  • 487³ = 115,501,303, and 1 + 1 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 1 + 3 + 0 + 3 = 19.

It’s pretty cool that both sums equal each other, but it’s even cooler that 487 is the smallest prime number that can make that claim.

487 = 157 + 163 + 167, so 487 is also the sum of three consecutive prime numbers.

  • 487 is a prime number.
  • Prime factorization: 487 is prime.
  • The exponent of prime number 487 is 1. Adding 1 to that exponent we get (1 + 1) = 2. Therefore 487 has exactly 2 factors.
  • Factors of 487: 1, 487
  • Factor pairs: 487 = 1 x 487
  • 487 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √487 ≈ 22.068076

How do we know that 487 is a prime number? If 487 were not a prime number, then it would be divisible by at least one prime number less than or equal to √487 ≈ 22.068. Since 487 cannot be divided evenly by 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, or 19, we know that 487 is a prime number.

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Forgon Andor and David

Andor Forgon and my son, David. Andor is the caretaker of the Mihály Forgon museum in Mihályfalva. David wrote, “Andor Forgon, who is a distant cousin (If I’ve done my math right we’re tenth cousins twice removed. You’d have to go back to the 1600s to find a common ancestor). Still, he had a lot of interesting information about the Forgon branch of our family and about the history of Mihályfalva.”

My husband’s second great-grandmother was named Erzsébet Forgon. She was born into Hungarian nobility in a little village called Mihályfalva in what is now southern Slovakia. Her parents were Juditha Dancs and Boldizsár Forgon.

Since Erzsébet was born into a Catholic family, we were not able to find her christening record in Mihályfalva. It was very discouraging pouring over the Reformed Church records, seeing plenty of people with the name Forgon, but not her christening record. I found the record of her conversion from Catholicism to the Reformed Church. It’s the last record on the page below. The images are small, but if you click on them, you should be able to read them much more easily.

162 Forgon Erzsébet

I was also able to find her marriage record. It is the first entry in the year 1856.

3 1856-01-24 wedding

I had almost given up hope finding her christening record. When my son and I visited Mihályfalva three years ago, he asked someone in town where a Catholic would take their children to get baptized. The town named seemed so far away. We looked online a little but did not immediately find her christening record.

Because Familysearch volunteers have indexed so many records, we were able to find Erzsébet’s 9 October 1836 christening record here. Her christening is listed near the top of the second of the two pages of the document.

I was also able to find the 5 June 1809 christening record of her father, Boldizsár son of János Forgon and Krisztina Nagy.  That baptism is the second entry in June, and his brother’s christening is listed right under his.

The 8 May 1768 christening of my husband’s 4th great grandfather, János Forgon, son of Péter Forgon and Borbála Kovács is the third entry on the first page of this document.

This 19 June 1741 document appears be the christening record of my husband’s 5th great grandfather Péter Forgon, son of István (Stephan) Forgon. It is the 7th entry on the 2nd page of the document. This christening occurred in Mihályfalva at a time when mothers were not considered important enough to list on records. Péter and his brother István who was christened 26 April 1743 (1st page; 17 entry) both converted to Catholicism.

All of these ancestors lived in Mihályfalva and the Catholic baptisms were performed in two different towns. I probably would not have found any of them if they had not been indexed and if not for the genealogical work done by one of my husband’s most important relatives. A very short account of his life follows:

One of the most famous people named Forgon was Dr. Mihály Forgon. His 22 October 1885 christening is 4th from the bottom of the first page. While he worked on his law degree he found time to compile descendant charts for the many noble families who lived in Gömör County, Hungary. After receiving his law degree, Dr. Forgon worked as a prosecutor. During World War I, he served as a reserve lieutenant on the Russian front in Poland.  About three weeks after he arrived in Poland, he was tragically and fatally shot. He was only 29 years old.

I’ve included the descendant table Mihály Forgon made for the Forgon family below. After not too many years a descendant chart becomes much too large to fit on one single sheet of paper so Mihály Forgon separated the descendant chart into three additonal tables. The earliest date on the main table is 1573, and it maps the way to the remaining tables as follows:

  • Four generations below Forgon János we have Balint who becomes the top of table #IV. (We will see my husband’s family on this table.)
  • The next generation has János who becomes the top of table #III.
  • That same generation also has Zsigmond, the father of István and Zsigmond who are at the top of table #II.

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Dr. Mihály Forgon name is listed near the bottom of table #I under the names of his parents, Rafáel Forgon and Erzsébet Bodon. Forgon and Bodon were both noble families and the most honored surnames in Mihályfalva.

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My husband’s second great grandmother, Erzsébet, is listed on this fourth chart. You can see her name in the middle of the chart approaching the right hand side under Boldizsár and his wife Juditha Dancs. Erzsébet’s husband, Ferdinánd Barna, is listed just below her name.

Forgon 242 Forgon Boldizsár & Dancs Judit

One of the reasons I wanted to write about the Forgon family is because I’ve met one of its members on WordPress. The beautiful Veronika Forgon also traces her roots back to Mihályfalva to this noble family. She is the lovely model featured in these four posts:

Veronika Forgon – Hajógyári Sziget

Veronika Forgon – Buda Castle

Veronika Forgon – Margitsziget

Veronika Forgon – Kopaszi Dam

Update: When I wrote this post I wasn’t exactly sure how Veronika is related to my husband and my children, but after reading it, she contacted us, and now I know! I was thrilled to learn that she is my husband’s 11th cousin, and my children are her 11th cousins once removed.