Three nations cherish his memory: the Hungarian, the Romanian, and the American. He was born in Hungary, in Gyula, just like the father of Albrecht Dürer.
Pomucz György (Romanian: George Pomuţ, English: George Pomutz.) He was born in the Kingdom of Hungary on 31 May 1818. He was a centurion in the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-49, a Brigadier General (Brevet) of Romanian origin, born in Hungary, and a U.S. citizen, later serving as a U.S. diplomat.
As we mentioned, Pomucz György was born in Gyula to a Romanian family. His father, Ioann Pomutz, was a blacksmith, and his mother was Victoria. He took part in the 1848-49 Revolution and War of Independence as a captain of the army, and he fought on the Hungarians’ side. He is a great example that not every Romanian decided to join the Habsburgs. He distinguished himself in many battles, finally finishing as a captain at Komárom Castle, and after some hiding, he arrived in America, taking advantage of the letter of parole issued by General Klapka to his soldiers.
In the United States of America, he became an active member of the Hungarian emigration and was one of the founders of the Hungarian colony of New Buda in Iowa. In 2000, there were 235 inhabitants.
The Hungarians, led by Újházy László, reached southern Iowa in the summer of 1850, where they seized a territory for themselves. As their chronicle puts it, “naming the settlement Újbuda, they bowed their heads and prayed for the liberation of Hungary, for Újbuda, and that the God of the Hungarians would guide Kossuth from Turkish lands to his new homeland, America, as soon as possible.”
The first news of the new settlement reached Pest in December 1850, quite early by the standards of the time. The Magyar Hírlap, for example, reported that “According to an American newspaper, Újházy and his exiled companions settled permanently in the county of Decatur, and named their colony Új-Buda, in memory of the country they were forced to leave. New Buda is situated on the banks of the Thompson River, not far from the Missouri border, in a fertile valley cut through with pastures and woods. The exiles are in good health, despite their constant toil. They have also bought a house, which will be delivered to them in October, and in which they will spend the winter. At present, they are camping in a dense forest on the banks of the river”.
The inhabitants of the settlement hoped that Kossuth Lajos and the other Hungarian emigrants would live together here and form a town. Together with Újházy László, Pomucz György also went to St. Louis to meet Kossuth Lajos, but Kossuth did not want to hear anything about New Buda; he never went there, and he disapproved of the intention to settle permanently in America. For a long time, Pomucz György kept the spirit alive among the Hungarian settlers of New Buda, as Xántus János, who visited New Buda in 1854, saw it.
According to the ideas of Pomucz György, Xántus drew the city they wanted to see there, with its church, school, shops, streets, squares, houses, and buildings. These were beautifully described by Kende Géza and Vasváry Ödön in their volumes on Hungarian Americans. However, these remained just nice dreams.
What was built by 1854: eight houses made of planks and bricks, perhaps a post office, and a distillery. The dream town with its boulevards, vast squares, and public buildings remained on paper. Mostly because it was bypassed by the railway, and only the towns where the train stopped had a chance. But a later American historian also suggested that the Hungarians who came here were not very good at agriculture, neither at growing crops nor raising livestock. They were noble people at home or soldiers.
Pomucz was already an American citizen in 1855 and later fought valiantly in the American Civil War, risking his life for the unity of the United States. During the American Civil War, he helped organize the 15th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a task that was completed in November 1861. He was with his friend Major Kompolti for some time. The regiment had 37 officers and 1,113 men. Polmutz was elected assistant regimental officer on 13 December 1861, major on 22 April 1863, and lieutenant-colonel on 18 August 1864. In this rank, he was appointed commander of the Third Brigade in General Sherman’s Tennessee Corps and was promoted to colonel on 23 November 1864.
The 15th Iowa Regiment took part in the Battle of Shiloh, where he was severely wounded in the hip on April 7, 1862, but remained on his horse until it threw him off. After his recovery, he took part in further fighting, and at the siege of Atlanta, as major, he led the regiment in the charge. It was in recognition of his military merit that he was promoted to brigadier-general on 13 March 1865. After the war, he returned briefly to Keokuk, Iowa. Before departing to Russia to take up diplomatic duties there, he compiled the history of the 15th Iowa Infantry, an effort which won considerable praise from the press and his army comrades.
On February 16, 1866, he was appointed United States Consul in St. Petersburg. He later became Consul General, in which position he was involved in the first major American foreign policy move after the Civil War, when Alaska was purchased from the Russians for a pittance of $7.2 million in 1867. He was recalled from his diplomatic service by President Hayes in 1878, but never returned to the United States. He remained in St. Petersburg and died there in great poverty on October 12, 1882.
After Pomucz’s death, three nations (Hungary, Romania, and the United States of America) cherished his memory. In 1913, the United States Congress passed a resolution that Pomucz’s remains be brought home from St Petersburg to America and buried in Arlington Cemetery in Washington, DC. The outbreak of the First World War obscured the implementation of this resolution.
During the Second World War, in 1944, the US government named a so-called Liberty Ship class transport ship after him, the SS George Pomutz, which was in service from 1944 to 1970. Hungarian volumes on the 1848-49 War of Independence have little to say about Pomucz’s role in the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-49, and less literature has been published in Hungary about the freedom fighters who went into exile, as it is more difficult to follow the life stories of the emigrants. More information about him can be found in the literature on Hungarian emigration to the US or the American Civil War.
However, after Trianon, his origin became debated. A quote from Vasváry Ödön from 1939:
“The Romanians are trying to appropriate Pomutz as their hero, although he spent his whole life among the Hungarians, with Hungarians, and declared himself Hungarian. His colonel, Belknap, writes of him as a Hungarian, which he would not have done if Pomutz had said he was a Romanian. A supposed grandson of his (see Popovici, in the bibliography) writes about him in an article full of misinformation and distortions as one of the forerunners of the Daco-Romanian idea.”
After the regime change in 1989, street names were changed in Gyula, too, and as a result, a street was named after Pomucz, “General Pomutz” street. In 1998, the Research Institute of Romanians in Hungary placed a commemorative plaque in Romanian and Hungarian on the wall of the building at 19 Kossuth Street in Gyula, where General Pomucz’s father used to have his forge, in honour of the Captain of the Hungarian Army of the 1848-49 Revolution and War of Independence, a general in the American Civil War. The 40×60 cm commemorative plaque was made of bronze by Gyula sculptor Kiss László. In 2004, the Romanian-American community of Cleveland (Ohio) erected a statue in Pomucz’s honour next to St. Mary’s Cathedral. Later, on 13 October 2007, a statue of Pomucz was unveiled in Gyula, in the square of General Pomutz.
Source: http://Szócsinné Vitéz Léber Ottilia and https://ujbudaonline.hu/2025/03/11/a-szabadsagot-mindenesetre-mar-elvezzuk/ and https://ma7.sk/kozelet/magyar-emlekek-nyomaban-pomutz-gyorgy-n-egyesult-allamok
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