St. Margaret Catholic Church - Albany, LA
Posted by: Groundspeak Regular Member scrambler390
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
Published By:Groundspeak Regular Member silverquill
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

Visit Instructions:
Please give the date and brief account of your visit. Include any additional observations or information that you may have, particularly about the current condition of the site. Additional photos are highly encouraged, but not mandatory.
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mrahudson visited St. Margaret Catholic Church - Albany, LA 05/08/2014 mrahudson visited it