everywhere, learn all languages, travel to all countries, practice all trades, and possess all vices as well as virtues.
We have here plenty of organizations, and still the most useful or necessary may be lacking. But there is no scarcity of noble, exalted, high-sounding principles in any of them. And if those principles were practiced fully by all of the human family we would not need any more lodges or organizations, nor even all of those which we already have.
In 1904 there came into our grand society of C. S. P. S. a disruption, causing a withdrawal and the founding of a new order called the Western Bohemian Brotherly Union, Zapadni Cesko-Bratrská Jednota. At the present writing this order has a membership of 18,055. The lodge of Antonin Dvorák of Z. C. B. J. was organized at Wilson on June 10, 1904, by Dr. J. P. Pecival, with twenty male and fifteen female charter members. The first officers were: past master, Ferd Pecival; president, Dr. J. P. Pecival; vice president, Marie Veverka; secretary, Joseph Tampier; financial secretary, John Hoch: treasurer, Josef Libal; guide, Ján J. Florian; inside guard, Josef Hoch; outside guard, Amalie Tobias.
On January 1, 1914, the same lodge had seventy-two male and fifty-two female members. The following were elected officers: past president, Zdenka Cerny; president, John Helus; vice president, Marie Stehno; secretary, Ferd Pecival; financial secretary, J. H. Cerny; treasurer, F. A. Swehla; guides, Fr. Bohata and Marie Hoch; guard, Anton and Václav Brant; trustees, Jos. Zbornik, Fr. Kaitman and Frant. Bohata.
I must now break the thread of my story about organized societies to introduce a further statement relating to early settlements, so as not to omit our brethren from Moravia.
The Moravian brothers have from the earliest European settlements in the New World left “their footprints on the sands of time.” As Moravia is located to the southeast of Bohemia (Cechy), so their settlement in Ellsworth county occupies the same relative position to our Bohemian settlement. The first families from the unhappy land of Moravia came to the settlement in 1878, from the village Pisarova, near the town of Schilburg, department of Olomouc. They were Josef Macek, Fr. Kroboth, Fr. Jilka, and Ján Steiner. From Hustopece, near Brunn, Moravia, came Martin Hoffmans and Karel Urbanek. These six families came via Bremen, Germany, on the ship Leipzig, arriving at Baltimore, Md., in sixteen days. The above-named families were the first direct from Moravia. Other settlers arrived from Ringgold county, Iowa, among them the Dolecek brothers, Leopold and Vit, both having large families. Leopold settled in Russell county, near Dubuque; Vit Dolecek, in Noble township, Ellsworth county, adjacent to the Moravians. I am informed that there are but three Americans in all Noble township, the rest of the inhabitants being Bohemians or Moravians and their descendants.
It should be stated here that our colony did not buy land collectively, but individually. The greatest possible freedom of action prevailed. No individual was bound to any taxation or cast-iron rules of subordination. That would increase the hardships of pioneer life. On the contrary, a helping hand was always ready for the needy as far as was possible.
No attempt was made to introduce Old World methods of dividing land. No settling in the old method of villages. The American way of living, each on his farm land, we made our way; the only deflection being of not build-
