Albany: Louisiana's Hungarian Settlement

In eighteen ninety-six, three Hungarian immigrants named Julius Bruskay, Adam Mocsary, and Theodore Zboray arrived in Livingston Parish drawn by work at the Brackenridge Lumber Mill. They settled near present-day Albany and named their community Arpadhon, after a national hero of Hungary. Within a decade, dozens of Magyar families had followed, clearing land and starting farms.

When the lumber mill closed in nineteen sixteen, they turned to strawberries, which became the dominant crop of Livingston Parish through the nineteen thirties. Arpadhon, absorbed into the broader Albany area, was at one time the largest rural Hungarian settlement in the United States. A cultural association still maintains the community's identity, and Hungarian surnames remain common throughout the parish.