Gabriel DeKorponay

This man’s life is a paradox. He eagerly stepped into military service on numerous occasions but his life’s work was teaching the latest dance steps.

Source material for Gabriel’s life story comes mostly from newspaper articles. However, some of the information reported appears to have come from the man’s own claims about himself and can’t be substantiated. 

His story begins with his 1809 birth in Hungary as Gábor Lajos Korponay. A passenger list shows his immigration to New York in May of 1844 with his wife Maria and year-old daughter Gabriella. Maria also had two boys, both of whom died in their 20s while their sister lived into her 80s.

Before they embarked on their voyage from Belgium, their surnames took on a French variation as a means of self-promotion. Upon arriving, the objective was to offer “fashionable” dance instruction, as described in this New York Herald advertisement from December 18, 1844. “Madame Korponay” accompanied “Monsieur” on the piano, with their key selling point being the new dances that were becoming so popular in Europe.

Like traveling performers, they stayed as long as there were customers, then moved on. Their stops in 1845 included Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Charleston, then to Kentucky, Louisiana, and St. Louis. They settled there in the “gateway to the West.” In addition to dance classes, Gabriel taught the art of fencing at a private school for boys.

Newspaper accounts credit Gabriel with introducing the polka to America. While it can’t be verified that he was the first, he was perhaps the most well-known in promoting what was a dance craze in Paris in 1840. It was a quicker version of the waltz, and it so dominated the dance floors of Europe it led to the term “polkamania.” 

Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845 but a border dispute arose that culminated in the Mexican War of 1846-48. In April of 1847, the 3rd Regiment, Missouri Mounted Infantry was formed with Captain Gabriel DeKorponay in command of Company B. Their travels took them through Kansas to Santa Fe, but it was an amphibious invasion of Mexico that ended the military action by the end of 1847.

That winter Gabriel remained in the service as a recruiter, as reported here. The peace treaty was signed in early 1848, but disturbing news reached him and his heart turned toward his homeland. A political revolution in Hungary had begun.

He publicly tried to raise money to send men to help in the cause until he learned it would violate neutrality laws. Instead, the story below says he took a teaching position at West Point, but another source says there is no corroborating data to support that claim. If he did teach there, it must have only been for the fall semester of 1848 since he had resigned by the time this story appeared.

The Hungarian War of Independence continued into the summer of 1849 and a reputable source reveals he actually sailed for Hungary, but the fighting was over by the time he arrived. On his return the family moved to Philadelphia by 1850. It was the only time they would be listed in a federal census. He reported his occupation as a teacher but he also worked as an interpreter for the Eastern District of the U.S. courts. 

It wasn’t long before he hit the road again to promote his dancing classes, as evidenced by newspaper advertising found in Montgomery, Alabama, New Orleans, and Frankfort, Kentucky. His success in the Bluegrass State in 1854 can be measured by the length of time he stayed there and the 88 ads placed between April and November. In those ads he replaced the prefix of “Monsieur” with the unofficial title of “Colonel” (which wasn’t an unusual practice in Kentucky).

As a creative promoter, there were occasions when a fabrication slipped into print like this one (referring to 1849 when he wanted to be there, but was too late). He tried again to recruit fellow Hungarians to fight in the Crimean War in 1855, and there are passenger lists showing he traveled between Philadelphia and Great Britain that year.

After that, his timeline is blank until the Civil War began in 1861. On June 28 of that year, Gabriel was elected Lieutenant Colonel in the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This description of him ran in various newspapers that summer, and once again the claims are exaggerations at best.

The 28th Regiment was encamped that December at Point of Rocks, Maryland, east of Harper’s Ferry. In the mid-morning of the 19th, Confederate cannons suddenly fired into the camp, one shell landing a few feet away from Gabriel. The regiment quickly returned fire and within a half-hour they sent about 200 rebels in full retreat.

A promotion to colonel came in the spring of 1862 as the unit swept into Northern Virginia. They were engaged in the Second Battle of Bull Run in August and the Battle of Antietam in September. By that time the aging officer’s health needed attention, so in October he was assigned command of the camp for paroled and exchanged prisoners near Alexandria, Virginia.

He applied for a discharge and received a surgeon’s certificate of disability on March 26, 1863. He was diagnosed with kidney disease, described then as “albuminuria, which unfits him for field duty.”

The colonel returned to his family in Philadelphia and to his former pursuits. Their son, Stephen, was drafted on July 9 into the 52nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment and promoted to Corporal. After being seriously wounded he was discharged on September 1, 1863.

Stephen’s death from bronchitis in June of 1865 meant that the DeKorponays needed a burial plot, which they purchased at Mount Moriah. It was 17 months later that his father died and would share the plot, as would son George in 1871 and Maria in 1886.