 St. Margaret Catholic Church - Albany, LA
N 30° 28.450 W 090° 34.783
15R E 732346 N 3373818
Fine old Catholic Church, located in the small community of Albany. Located right off Interstate 12. Still in use. Was clean and well kept. The Baton Rouge diocese official name is " St. Margaret Queen Of Scotland Parish"
Waymark Code: WM5XKE
Location: Louisiana, United States
Date Posted: 02/25/2009
Views: 5
Clean, Catholic church and grounds. Was really easy to locate and photograph, and walk around. Quiet and peaceful community. I found alittle history online, but best comes from Register application, located: here.St. Margaret's Catholic Church its locally significant in the area of ethnic history because it
and the Hungarian Presbyterian Church survive to best represent the ethnic heritage of Hungarian
Settlement. The year 1941 was chosen to end the period of significance because Hungarian
Settlement continued to be an ethnic community up to and past the fifty year cutoff.
Hungarian immigrants from the North were first attracted to the area around 1896. The
stimulus was the Charles Brakenridge Lumber Company, which advertised in Hungarian
newspapers for workers' promising employment as well as the opportunity to buy land. The three
original settlers were Julius Bruskay, Tivador Zboray and Adam Mocsary. They in turn wrote to
friends and relatives in both America and Hungary, and Bruskay and Zboray visited Hungarian
communities in the North to spread the word. Also, the Illinois Central Railroad paid to advertise the
area in an Hungarian newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. By 1900, seventeen Hungarian families had
moved to the sawmill community. They called their settlement Arpadhon, or "place of Arpad," in
honor of a legendary Hungarian hero. The earliest building (besides the mill complex) was the
Immigration House, a large two story building built by Brakenridge Lumber to serve various needs. It
provided temporary lodging for settlers and helped meet the immediate religious, educational and
social needs of the fledging colony. By 1910, the population of Arpadhon had grown to sixty-five
families (291 people). Presbyterians built their permanent place of worship in 1908 and the larger
Catholic population built St. Margaret's in 1910. Named for a patron saint of Hungary, the church
was consecrated in 1912.
Despite the mill's closing in 1916, Arpadhon continued to grow in the 1920s as more and
more Hungarians made it their home. Now the economic foundation was agriculture, with
strawberries as the dominant crop. From the very beginning, one of the chief inducements to
immigrate to the area had been the opportunity to buy cutover land (in twenty acre parcels) from the
lumber company. In the early years, settlers combined farming with a long day's work in the mill.
After the mill closed, they turned completely to farming, capitalizing on the strawberry boom
occurring in the area. By 1935, Arpadhon had reached its peak population of about 200 families
(1500 individuals). Up until the post World War II era, it was a strong self-contained ethnic
community where English was seldom heard and Hungarian married Hungarian. In later years the
name Arpadhon faded from use, as more and more people simply referred to the community as
Hungarian Settlement, the name it is known by today.
Street address: Jct. of LA 43 and I-12 30300 Catholic Hall Road Albany, LA USA 70711
 County / Borough / Parish: Livingston
 Year listed: 1992
 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Event (Area of Significance: European )
 Periods of significance: 1900-1924, 1925-1949
 Historic function: Religion. Sub - Religious Structure
 Current function: Religion. Sub - Religious Structure
 Privately owned?: yes
 Primary Web Site: [Web Link]
 Secondary Website 1: [Web Link]
 Season start / Season finish: Not listed
 Hours of operation: Not listed
 Secondary Website 2: Not listed
 National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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