Pioneer Czechs
In Colfax County
Written in 1926.
CHAPTER 21
(Continued from last week.)
know, a Bohemian would rather dance than eat, especially if there were any liquid refreshments to stimulate one. As soon as the accordion player struck the first note, the festivities were on and kept on until daybreak. If by chance the musician wore out, there were plenty of others to take his place. Those were happy days for young and old. As time advanced more room and more means provided other social functions. At all these gatherings and entertainments which I attended, from the first to the last, I have never known of a quarrel or disturbance to mar the harmony. Those present always included singing and closed with the Bohemian national anthem, “Where is my home?”
The redeeming feature of those hard times was the mutual helpfulness and sympathy evidenced by homesteaders for each other. It mattered not what their nationality or religion, a common need made brothers of all and sisters of the women. They were all like one family. If one was in need or trouble, the others even sacrificed to help.
In 1886, just fourteen years after we made entry and moved on our claim, the Northwestern Railroad built its branch from Scribner by way of Albion to Oakdale, connecting there with it main line. It cut across my land and the town of Howell was laid out a mile and a half east of my farm. By this time father owned a 320 acre farm and I had one of 160 acres. Compared to others, we were quite well off and living on a much different scale than in our homestead days, although not flying sky-high as many have done during the recent war (1914–1918) period and then falling flat. We learned by hard work and striving to preserve what we had, we can now ride in an automobile that is not plastered up with a mortgage. We have helped to build schools and churches and bring transportation close to home, so that our children need not go through the hardships we endured, and that they may enjoy the advantages we were in such sore need of but could not have. We are glad now that we were pioneers in all this. I have sold my farm and retired to West Point, where I once lived as a baby and whre I expect to spend the remainder of my life.”
CAME DIRECT FROM MORAVIA
(By Mrs. Emilie Jonas, of Ithaca, New York)
In 1876, during the month of May, Jakub Dvorak, his wife Frantiska and two children, son Frank and daughter Marie, came to Colfax county and took a homestead in Shell Creek precinct, fifteen miles northwest of Schuyler, four miles southwest of Wilson church, which was not there at that time. Jakub Dvorak was born in July 1843, in the village of Hrotov, near Jihlava. His wife, Frantiska Hrozova, was born March 9, 1848, in the village of Domamil, Moravske Budejovice. Their son, Frank, was born in Nova Rise near Moravske Budejovice. Little Marie was also born in Nova Rise near Morav- died soon after they came to Colfax county. At that time almost everybody who did not have any relatives in this country already, located at Peter Rank’s saloon which was then like a hotel for the emigrants, so my parents also stayed a few days at Peter Ranks before they found an 80-acre farm to buy which they purchased at once from Joe Stecker. There was a log house with one room and a leantoo. Adjoining this 80 was an 80-acre tract of homestead land so my father filed on it while mother owned the eigthy they bought from Mr. Stecker. Of course, those were the years of grasshoppers and poor crops, of which there was little planted anyway. So father worked out for the settlers who already had a better start. By trade he was a mason so he built chimneys and plastered farm houses. At that time he used to go across to Butler county to build chimneys and sometimes he was gone for months while mother took care of the homestead two mules and one cow. They had to build a sod house on the homestead and live there to prove it. The next spring I was born there and I can still remember where this sod house stood, although I do not remember living in it. At one time when my father was away somewhere building chimneys a rattle snake stung our only cow and it died. Once there was a prairie fire which was terrible, but our good German neighbors came over with teams and plowed around our log house so that it did not burn. I must have been about four years then. I also remember the terrible blizzard of February 1888, when us children had to stay in the school house all night. Brother Frank walked home two miles after midnight. Mother, who was in anxiety, started out in the storm for us and got half way and could not go any farther. Our neighbor found her and took her in. My father was one of the charter members who built the first Wilson Catholic church. As years went by my father prospered and when he passed away June 29, 1909, he left a nice property. Mother died in September 6, 1914. Both are buried in Wilson. My brother who came with my parents from Moravia, died June 28, 1932 in Redfield, South Dakota. My younger brothers, Joseph and Ladislav Dvorak, still own the old homestead and live there. Two sisters, Anna and Anastazie, both married, live in Colfax county. Francis and I live in New York state.
RELIGION.
In respect to religion, the large majority of Bohemians in Nebraska, as in the United States, are divided into two extremes—Liberalism and Catholicism. The remainder are Protestants, affiliating, in Nebraska, with the Presbyterians. The Liberals, also called Freethinkers, Rationalists and lately Modernists, among the Bohemians number, it is estimated, about sixty percent. Being therefore numerically in the majority, we place them first in order and to show what they have done in the way of building, give a list of their community halls. Catholics also have their halls, although not in the same proportion, for they confine themselves, naturally, more to building churches, schools and rectories.
Bohemian Liberals are organized mainly through their reading matter, lodges and schools. In two different periods they had branches of a Liberal Thinkers’ League (Svobodna Obec), but these are not now in existence in our state. This League had its beginning in 1870, being founded by Fr. B. Zdrubek, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 1871 Bohemians in Niobrara, Knox County, West Point, Cuming County, and in Saline County, belonged to branches of it, but did not flourish long. In the first decade of 1900 a Dr. Frank Iska of Chicago, recently arrived from Bohemia, agitated along these lines and several branches were again established in our state, but the war brought all such activitiees to a close and they have not been renewed.
LIBERALS’ COMMUNITY HALLS
CLARKSON: A fine brick building in town, the property of lodge Zapadni Svornost No. 28, Western Bohemian Fraternal Union.
SCHUYLER: A frame building in town, the property of lodge Zapadni Jednota No. 42, Bohemian Slavonian Benevolent Society.
(To be continued.)
