Szent István R. K. Magyar Egyházközség

St. Stephen’s Church in Beautyi (formerly Himlerville) was one of the most unique—and now defunct—churches of the Hungarian Catholic diaspora in the United States. It was built in the mid-1920s in eastern Kentucky, in the heart of the Hungarian mining community, with the permission of the Diocese of Covington. The church was established because the Hungarian population of Himlerville had lived without a priest for many years. According to contemporary accounts, many families’ children remained unbaptized, and various Protestant itinerant preachers performed pastoral duties. As a result of the organizational efforts of Hungarian Catholic missionaries—including Béla Szepessy—missionary services were first held in the settlement, and then plans were made to build an independent church. The church was consecrated in honor of King Saint Stephen. It served not only the Hungarian Catholics of Beauty but was also intended to be a pastoral center for Hungarian miners living in the border regions of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. According to the plans, regular missionary tours would have departed from here to visit the Hungarian communities in Logan, Gary, Williamson, and other mining settlements. However, the Hungarian settlement began to decline rapidly after the economic collapse of 1928. As a result of the bankruptcy of the Himler Coal Company and the subsequent exodus of the population, the Hungarian community virtually disappeared within a few years. The settlement was renamed Beauty in 1929, and the church’s Hungarian congregation dispersed. In the second half of the 20th century, an English-speaking priest would occasionally come to celebrate Mass in the building, but Hungarian-language pastoral care ceased. According to local accounts, the wooden church was later destroyed by a flood. Today, neither the building nor the parish exists; its memory is preserved primarily in works on the history of Hungarian emigration and at the local Hungarian cemetery. It never had a Hungarian priest; pastoral duties were performed by the American Rev. Henry Hanses.