Marghita

Marghita is a city in Bihor County, Romania.

The name appears to be derived from the name "Margit" (Margaret), Saint Margaret the patron of a local church. The first time it was used in a document was in 1216. In the 14th century, it became a feudal holding of the Hungarian landlord.

In 1376 king Louis I of Hungary gave to Marghita the right of organizing a fair and it developed in the next centuries as a market town. There were several peasant revolts against the feudal system affecting Marghita in 1467 and 1514. At the beginning of the 14th century, it became, together with the whole of Bihor county and Hungary, an Ottoman province.

In 1823, a great fire destroyed half of the buildings of Marghita. After the 1848 revolution, the local peasants were no longer serfs and manufacturing and industry began to develop.

Between 1940 and 1944, under the fascist government of Hungary, about 1,700 Jews of Marghita were sent to concentration camps as part of the Holocaust. After 1947 with the Soviets imposing a Communist government in Romania, factories and land were nationalized. Over the course of the next few years, Marghita took part in the Romanian industrialization process.