🇷🇴 Celebrating My Romanian Heritage 🇷🇴

Why I'm Doing This

The 4th of July, 2026, I realized I feel disconnected from American culture. It's cut and dry that I as a transgender person am not welcome here in the United States. So instead of fireworks, I did genealogy. I learned my great great grandpa, Octavian, came from a tiny village in Transylvania to the United States. So, I'm part Romanian and instead of dealing with America's bullshit, I'm going to be diving into my Romanian heritage.

This is Octavian with his wife, Georgia, my great great grandma. According to his World War II draft card, he was born in a tiny village in Sibiu county, Transylvania called Cârțișoara. At this time, Romania was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and he put down Hungary as his birthplace for the rest of his life. The Kingdom of Hungary was pursuing an aggressive policy of Magyarization at this time, meaning the Hungarian state was trying to assimilate his people culturally and linguistically. He and his family likely could not vote and the state was even pressuring people to Magyarize their names.

His exact birth year is unknown, some of his paperwork says 1895 and some of it says 1888. He came over to America through Ellis Island on a ship called the Ryndam in 1907. I tried to find the exact ship manifest but his naturalization was over a decade later and he put down a date that doesn't align with an exact arrival of the ship. He filled out a WWI draft card and served in the 21st Development Company, 154th Depot Brigade at Fort Meade according to his draft card. This means he either wasn't proficient enough in English or not physically fit enough to be deployed. However, looking through the records, he was shuffled around a lot and was assigned to become an engineer.

I've FOIA'd his military records and that will hopefully help me.

He married my great great grandma September 16th, 1919 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 3rd, 1920. She was a flapper who rode motorcycles and they definitely were in love because they had ten kids, nine of whom lived to old age. He passed away in the 1970s before my mom was born and is buried at a cemetary in the town I was born in. I used to run laps in that cemetary for cross country.