OUR PLACE · EVIDENCE & EVERYDAY QUESTIONS
The lost wine country around Tallapoosa and Waco
Budapest, Tokaj and Nyitra deserve a history grounded in records, not ghost stories.
Communities built around a crop
The Hungarian Colony marker, erected in 1988 and cataloged by the Georgia Historical Society, recalls three wine-making communities founded in 1888: Budapest, Tokaj and Nyitra. It describes Ralph L. Spencer recruiting Hungarian families and the building of homes, shops, a school, church and cemetery. This is a later commemorative account, not a contemporary census. [1]
Haralson County’s history page also describes Budapest and a settlement it calls Nitra, near Old Ridgeway Road west of Waco. It identifies a privately owned former rectory. The different spellings are worth retaining in archive searches; neither a modern account nor an old marker establishes current public access. [2]
Be careful with the dates and family counts
The marker refers to about 200 families invited; the county account says more than 50 responded to the call. Invitations and arrivals measure different things. We should not silently turn either into a verified population total. Household census schedules, church registers and deeds would be needed to trace who actually lived where. [1] [2]
Georgia passed statewide prohibition in 1907, and the statewide prohibition period began in 1908. That distinction helps explain why local accounts use both years. The law’s passage and its effect are not the same date. [3]
What ended—and what needs more proof
Both the marker and county account connect prohibition with the decline of the wine-making settlements. That is a documented interpretation in later histories. It does not prove that every vineyard closed on the same day or every family returned to Pennsylvania. Individual departure dates, property transfers and surviving businesses need household-level evidence. [1] [2]
The historical question is bigger than a vanished crop: how did families adapt when the market around their homes changed? A deed transfer, school record or church entry can make that change visible without treating an entire community as though it disappeared at once.
A respectful place to begin
The Georgia Historical Society locates the marker at U.S. 78 and Budapest Road near Waco. Its online record is a good place to start before planning a visit. Confirm safe stopping and legal access; the marker listing does not grant access to nearby homes or cemetery grounds. [1]
For the next edition, we would particularly value dated vineyard photographs, family documents and records identifying individual households. Permission and provenance matter. Claims about hauntings add no evidence about the people who lived here, and we have not used them to tell this story.
Sources and limits
Sources reviewed October 13, 2026. This first edition uses published records; it is not a new field inspection. Bracketed numbers link claims to the sources below. Substantive corrections will be dated here.