Sándor Bölöni Farkas

Who was Sándor Bölöni Farkas?

Sándor Bölöni Farkas or Alexander Farkas was a writer who is perhaps best known for his journals he made while traveling the United States in 1831. He described the United States as a wonderland, and praised American democracy very highly. The book was banned by the Roman Catholic Church in 1834.

Farkas was a Hungarian Szekler Unitarian who was instrumental in making a connection between American and British Unitarians and the surviving Unitarian Church in Transylvania. He was the first Hungarian Unitarian to visit America, as the secretary to Count Francis Beldi on a trip to Paris and America. In three months—September 3 to November 23, 1831—Farkas and Count Beldi toured New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. His Account of the Unitarians of Transylvania, was communicated in Latin to the Secretary of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and published in The Unitarian advocate and religious miscellany in 1832.