About the "Kabdebó" family

    The Armenians are one of the oldest nations in the world, owning a particularly rich history which is not free from serious tragedies either. Its ancient homeland was a fortress-like plateau, lying among the Black Sea, Urmia Lake and the River Euphrates, today's Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
     At the end of the 14th century Armenia lost its independence for hundreds of years. With time the country got under the Persian, Turkish and Russian rules and this caused several waves of emigration. At the end of the 14th century the ancestors of the Kabdebó family had also fled west from Armenia together with the tens of thousands of their fellow sufferers. They settled down in Moldova, where most of them continued their occupations which they had practised in their original home. Their Armenian names were quite difficult to pronounce and without any sense for the recipient habitants, hence the Armenian settlers began to bear Romanian nicknames.
     The original name of the Kabdebó family was "JEZERAN" which means "one who works with cattle". The male members of the family continued their ancient occupation, so they were butchers in Moldova too and they used the oxen-head emblem above their butcher's shops. According to these emblems they got the Romanian nickname "Cap de bou" that means "head of an ox". Most of the families with Armenian origin, like the Kabdebó family as well, preserved their Romanian nicknames, just writing them according to the Hungarian pronunciation and spelling. For example, Patrubány (patru bani= four coins), Esztegár (stegar = flag bearer) Kápálb (cap alb =gray-headed), Dzsokebin (joaca bine = plays well), Verzár (varzar = cabbage), Vákár (vacar = herdsman) etc.
     During the 17th century the Prince of Transylvania Apafi Mihály I summoned about eight-ten thousand Armenians from Moldova into Transylvania in order to boost the economy and trade of the country. The hardworking and mobile Armenians were pursuing trade and industry in general and they succeeded in adapting to the peaceful and tolerate surroundings quite quickly. Their assimilation into the Hungarian population took a relatively short time due to the fact that they had been marrying into Hungarian families.
     The families of Armenian origin were increasing and ramifying and the spelling of their surnames changed as time passed. Thus the different branches of the Kabdebó family have spelt their surname in different ways. Some of them use their name spelt as "Kabdebó" or "Cabdebó", other ones "Kapdebó" or "Capdebó", but there even are some branches which spell their name as "Kabdebon".
    We, the branch of the Kabdebó family from Székelyudvarhely, consider that we are descendants of the Kabdebó family from Gyergyószentmiklós. A member of this family, namely Kabdebó Márton, who was a merchant in Gyergyószentmiklós, bought the "Talpas" estate in "Arad" county, paying for it 40,000 gold forints. In 1838 he and his sons (Jakab, Miklós and Károly) as well as his grandson Antal (descendant of Péter, Márton's deceased son) were given the title of nobility and the coat of arms by the Austrian emperor and the Hungarian king, Ferdinand I.
     According to documents the ancestor of the Kabdebó family from Székelyudvarhely is Antal Kabdebó, who was born on 2nd May 1818 in Csíkszépvíz. He was a trader and died on 24th July 1900 in Gyergyóremete. His wife, Mária Ávéd, was born in Gyergyószentmiklós. The time and place of her death are unknown. They got married on 19th May 1857 in Gyergyószentmiklós and they had five children: Gergely, Veronika, József, Antal and Anna. József was born in Gyergyóremete in 1867. His children were József, Sándor and András. The sons and daughters of András (born in Székelyudvarhely in 1907) are: Sándor, András, Zsófia and Éva. Éva, married to Zoltán András, still lives in Székelyudvarhely and gave birth to three children, Zoltán, Levente and Kinga. Zoltán and Levente are shareholders in the Kabdebó Press. The emblem of the press was designed by Éva's elder brother, Sándor, who used several motifs from the coat of arms of the family. The husband of Sándor's elder daughter, Zsófia, is also a shareholder in the company.
The building in which the press functions is owned by Éva Kabdebó.