Biography

Daughter of Zsuzanna Kossuth Mszleny, niece of Lazlo Kossuth. Her mother died in 1854 of tuberculosis, and Frances Seward offered to take her or her sister in for a year. She was politely declined in a letter from Elizabeth Schoonmaker, written to Frances Seward August 17, 1854. "I visited Madame Zsulavasky in New York last week, when she commissioned me to offer you very many thanks, in reply to your benevolent invitation to one of the orphans of Madame Meszleny , to spend one year with you. She wished me to say she was not with her sister, at the time of her death- but had been till that Event, in communication with her by letter- that in giving her daughters into her care, Madame Meszleny had requested, among other things, that they should not be separated.- and that consequently the means necessary for their education, according to their mother’s wish, during four years, had been accepted, from Mr Cruger and Mr Pelk , I think. " Gisela moved back to Hungary as an adult, but also died of tuberculosis. " Zsuzsanna, already stricken with tuberculosis, died in 1854. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, the outstanding pioneer reformer in many spheres, wrote a touching tribute to her entitled Memorial of Madame Susanne Kossuth Meszlenyi. The two little orphaned girls were then adopted by a lady from the wealthy and prominent Cruger family. Subsequently, when they grew up both returned to Hungary. Gizella died young, in 1865, like her mother a victim of tuberculosis."