Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky - The Filson ...

1992] HimlerviUe 533
the summer for adults. Evening classes in English and American
history were taught for residents too old to attend the public
schools.6°
More Hungarians wanted to move to Martin County than
Himlerville could accommodate. In the 1920s there was a waiting
list of 1,500 people in the United States and in Hungary who
wanted to come to Himlerville. The waiting list was long because
Himlerville was an attempt to create a little Hungary in
a corner of Appalachia. In Martin County the immigrants found
a land rich in mineral resources that provided abundant economic
opportunity for poor peasants. The hills of eastern Kentucky
reminded the Hungarians of their native land. Officials
of the Himler Coal Company were aware that the powerful homemaking,
landowning instincts within the European peasant attracted
immigrants to Himlerville because of a desire to remain
close to the land. The urban lifestyle most immigrants experienced
in American Cities alienated them from the land. Because
Himlerville enabled Hungarians to remain attached to the land,
most immigrants who came to Himlerville intended to remain in
eastern Kentucky permanently. Since Himlerville's residents
owned the ground upon which their houses stood, they, unlike
immigrant miners in other southern Appalachian coal camps,
did not move from mine to mine because of dissatisfaction with
company control within the camps, prejudice, or working conditions.
Although Himlervine was an attractive community, life was
nonetheless difficult for its residents. The Hungarians Often had
to endure racial prejudice and discrimination. Native mountaineers
perceived the immigrants as being inferior to everybody
but the Negro and frequently called Hungarians "hunkies," or
"hunks." Himlerville was known throughout Martin and surrotmding
counties as "Hunkie Town," "Hunkieville," or "Little
60 Chapman, "Influence of Coal," 232; Bagger, "Himler,'" 187.
61 Kentucky, Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1922, p. 286.
62 Bagger, "Himlcr," 187.