I believe that originally the name Kevish was Kives in Hungary, and it was changed here to be spelled in English like it was pronounced. Here are the clues for the name of Michael Kevish:

• On the 1902 emigration and immigration ship lists, it looks like Mihaly Keves.
• On the 1910 census, it looks like Michael Ives (yes, missing the first letter).
• On the 1918 WWI draft registration card, it looks like Mike Kivis.
• On the 1920 census, it looks like Michael Kivash.
• On the 1930 census, it looks like Mike Kevish.
• On the 1940 census, it looks like Mike Kevish.

However, on the immigration card in 1920, it is typed as Michael Kives. Because the card is typed, I believe it is most likely spelled correctly. I have seen some lists of Hungarian names where there are names spelled Kivés, with the accent mark over the e. This can make the accented e look like an i to an indexer. So sometimes that is where spelling mishaps occur, with accented letters.

Census forms cannot be relied on for accurate spelling of names, or for accuracy of any information, really. There are many reasons for this. On old census forms, a person called the enumerator went door to door asking people all the questions, and wrote down their answers on the form. Enumerators quite often just wrote down the names as they sounded; they weren’t concerned so much with spelling accuracy. Sometimes enumerators did not understand people with foreign accents very well, and even if they did, they just wrote down what the person said; the enumerator had no way to know if the person was being truthful. And sometimes people just didn’t know, for example, an adult son or daughter still living at home may not know where his parents’ parents were born. Illiteracy was quite common; many people could not read nor write, and didn’t even know how to spell their own name (you see many legal papers signed with an “X”). These forms are up to about 150 years old, so if they have deteriorated it may be difficult to read them. And so many of the enumerators had terrible handwriting, that it can be very difficult trying to type the names into an index for people to search on. Although, I must say some indexers should not be indexers. On the 1910 census mentioned in the list above, with the name written as Ives on the census form, the indexer put the name as Dover. And I just saw a census form with the name of Fred written on it, and the indexer put the name as Mex!

It was very common for foreign names to be changed to more Americanized spellings when immigrants arrived, or later as they settled into their new lives and interacted with American citizens.

Mihaly arrived at Ellis Island in New York on 26 Jun 1902, sailing on the SS Graf Waldersee from Hamburg, Germany. The Graf Waldersee was a 13,102 ton ship with four masts and one funnel, and could carry 2,546 passengers. Mihaly’s residence is listed as Parad, Hungary, and he was 18 years old. The accommodation is listed as Zwischendeck, which translated means “between deck”, that is, the deck below the main deck and above the cargo deck. In English, the Zwischendeck is the steerage deck, or third class. The ship made stops in Boulogne-sur-Mer (France) and Plymouth (MA) before reaching Ellis Island, so the trip took almost two weeks. The photo shows the only photo I have of Mihaly Kives, and his wife Lena Posa Kives (holding Leslie Kevish) about 1953, taken about a year before Mihaly died in 1954.

Mihaly’s final destination in this country is listed as Wehrum, PA, and it states he is going to join his father, which it looks like his name is also Mihaly Keves. The manifest also states that he was never in prison and is not a polygamist, but he cannot read nor write. The photo at left shows most of the town of Wehrum in 1923.

Wehrum was founded in 1901 as a coal-mining company town by two men, one of whom was Warren Delano, an uncle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A local historian told me that the coal mining companies actively recruited young men from depressed regions such as near Parad, Hungary, to come overseas and work in the mines, and since the town of Wehrum was founded solely as a means of housing the miners, no doubt Mihaly worked in the mines there. The coal mine closed in 1929, after suffering several accidents and explosions over the years, and since there was no mine, the town was abandoned a few years later. Wehrum is now a ghost town, and few visible signs remain. The photo at right shows what’s left of the town cemetery.

In 1909, a mine explosion killed 21 miners, which may have been the impetus for Mihaly to leave PA and move to IL, as he is listed as living in Rockdale (Joliet township) in the 1910 census. He remained in the Joliet/Lockport area of Will county the rest of his life, until he died in 1954. I have not found Mihaly or his father in any records in PA (so far), but there are some people with the surname Kevish in some census records in that area of PA, so it is possible that there are some other relatives of Mihaly there, especially if his father also lived there.