Biography

Daughter of Zsuzanna Kossuth Meszleny, niece of Lajos Kossuth. Her mother died of tuberculosis in 1854, and Frances Seward offered to take in one of the two orphaned daughters for a year. She was politely declined in a letter from Elizabeth Schoonmaker, written 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. " Ilona and her sister Gisella returned to Hungary a few years later.