Hello,

My Hungarian mother's mother was an ordinary Baroness whose exact maiden name I don't have but think it was Mrey and so have not been able to trace her down. Not sure, but her first name may have been Georgette.

She married and then took the last name of her husband (my grandfather), Huszr, who I know from photos was some relatively high ranking officer in the Austro-Hungarian military. His first name I don't recall.

There is some mystery as to who he was and where he came from, one theory that will never be proven is that he was possibly a reject/out-of-wedlock son from the Romanov Tsar family for he showed up in Roumania with property out of nowhere.

He looked like the twin brother of Tsar Alexander II and people kept thinking he was the Tsar (no joke :).

Point: I don't know his "aristocratic" rank though I doubt that his wife the Baroness lost hers by marrying him.

I know they attended at least one Austro-Hungarian "Royal picnic" -- I used to have the engraved gift cigarette case given to guests of such functions which either my grandmother or grandfather received. I also know the this Huszr family had a coat of arms since I've seen in on some of the remaining family silverware my mother had.

The Huszr estate was in Nograd, Hungary, but the property was confiscated by the Russians when they took over in '56, and both my grandmother and grandfather dies not too long after that.

My question is more or less just curiosity and in a sense a general one about "diluted" aristocracy.

My mother re-married "outside" of the usual arranged marriage to like-aristos, specifically to the man who would become my father, an American journalist. Therefore, I'm not a "pure blue blood" and my question is:

----- What does that make me -- a 1/4 Baron or 1/2 a Knight or Page (since those are the two last levels below Baron/Baroness as far as I know)? :)

Any help on how/where I could find out for sure and on any of the above, and/or any informed reply here to this would be appreciated.

Thank You.

Philip Knight ***
Los Angeles, CA USA
.................................

*** PS: This is my legal last name which I created in part as at tribute to my mother since I never liked my father's last name -- and while I used Husaar for 15 years, nobody could pronounce it correctly (and even the IRS got it wrong :)

So in the end, I chose the simple name "Knight" which is a sort of way of saying 'Huszar" (cavalry/horseman division(s) that in a way kind of replaced the Knights of the middle Ages).