Follow
Welcome! Üdvözöljük!
This is the collaborative home page of the Kohn Family that has lived in various towns within Vas County, Hungary since the late 18th Century. The family has taken on various surnames during the 19th and 20th centuries to ease their way into Hungarian society, including Kovacs, Molnar, Kertesz, Kollar, Kaldi, and others yet to be identified. And we are always looking for more!
Of course, members of numerous other families married into ours in the two centuries since surnames were adopted, including Scheiber, Scheiber, Feigelstock, Arnstein, Winkler, Gorog, Lazarovits, Kozma, Tempest, Carmely, Sutton, Brown, Spatz, Sarlai, Halasz, and more.
The genetic marker for male members our family with the Kohn and related surnames (classified by scholars as "Y Chromosome Y Chromosome J2b2a*_455-8"), is Semitic. Of the 176 individuals we have found thus far with this type of Y chromosome, 175 have an oral tradition of being Cohanim, although it appears from the genetics that our families diverged 800 years ago and are found throughout Europe. This is testament to the remarkable power of oral tradtion, wherein over 32 generations (800 years / 25 years) the particular fact of our tribal origin has been maintained.
Members of the extended family are welcome to add to this page, to add relatives to our Geni family tree, and to upload documents, photographs, or stories that you think will be of interest. This is an entirely collaborative project in which all are welcome to participate.
Common Ancestor
All families identified thus far descend from an individual named [Matyas Kohn
0009552488699 Matyas Kohn] who was born circa 1765 and was living in the village of Kald Hungary in 1848, when according to his grandson, the author Kozma Antal, he played a patriotic role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
His descendants departed Kald in the mid-19th Century and lived at various times in the Hungarian communities in Janoshaza, Csepreg, Csorna, Szombathely, Budapest, Tet, and Gyor. Today they thrive not only in Budapest, but London, Haifa, Calfornia, and the New York metropolitan area.
History
Matyas had three sons whose 230+ descendants are represented on our tree:
Henrik Kohn, from whom springs the modern-day Kaldi and Molnar families;
Laszlo Kohn, progenitor of today's Schreiber family; and
Jakob Kohn, for whom we have sadly not yet found any descendants who survived the Shoah.
Extensive family trees for all three brothers can be found here on Geni.com.
DNA Test
If you are a Kohn from Vas County, and would like to determine whether you are connected to this family, you are very welcome to browse our tree and/or take a Y chromosome DNA test at our affiliated Jewish DNA Project website, which can be found here:
Questions or comments regarding this project are welcome, and can be sent to Adam Brown