After the Civil War, the first census was taken in 1870, which gave an account of all the Hungarians living in the fifty largest cities of the United States. According to the census, the city of Chicago had one hundred fifty-nine Magyar inhabitants.

Very little, perhaps, nothing would we know about the first Hungarian society, and about the peculiar life of the Hungarians in the seventies, if eventually, Paul Lipthay industrial artist from Budapest, and a man of high culture, had not have come to America in 1870, who journeyed through the whole country and studied the well established industry of the United States, winning distinction and documents of honor for his masterpieces of work at the Exposition in New Orleans, St. Louis, and New York, and visiting Magyars at the same time in 2the several cities.

In his article: "Magyar America," he remarks about the Magyars in the United States, how they lived a quaint, isolated life, then, as well as at the present time, which life is neither Hungarian nor American, but from the crossing of both, developed an American-Hungarian life of separate American-Hungarian views and American-Hungarian standards of living.

BEGINNING OF THE SOCIETIES

In Chicago in 1871, Joseph Byfield, Moritz Byfield, Samuel Weber, Louis Weber, 3Hungarian Jews, and Mr. Kish, founded the Franz Deak Society, which procured work and gave financial aid to the recent arrivals of Hungarian immigrants, regardless to the race or religion.

This was the eighth Hungarian society in the United States. Joseph Byfield, the owner of the Sherman Hotel, was the "Guardian Angel" of Hungarian immigrants.