Pioneer Czechs
In Colfax County
Written in 1926.
—CHAPTER 19.—
(Continued from last week.)
WALTER B. SADILEK, attorney, since June 21, 1915. Born in Wilber, Saline county, December 20, 1889, his parents being pioneers there, Frank J. and Teresa, born Jurka. His father came to this country in 1867, to Omaha in 1873, to Wilber in 1877. Young Sadilek studied law in the State University of Lincoln two years, then in Highland College, Des Moines, Iowa, graduated in Lincoln. In 1913 married Frances Slajs, they have a daughter.
JOSEPH DUBSKY, dealer in poultry, cream and eggs, since 1920. Born near Trebic, Moravia, in 1881. His parents, Charles and Mary, came to this country in 1890 and settled in Schuyler. The father died in 1893, buried in Schuyler, the mother in 1924, buried in Sion cemetery. Joseph Dubsky married Emma Knap in 1903, they have eleven children.
PETER F. SVOBODA, partner in undertaking firm Svoboda & Son, since 1922. Born on a farm in Saunders county, in 1873. His father came from Moravia in 1872. After finishing the grammar school Svoboda studied in Western Normal College, in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1894 he married Agnes Roh and became the father of seven children. Mrs. Svoboda died in 1916 and in 1918 he married Mrs. Mary Bukacek. He farmed his father’s farm until 1918, then gave it to his son Vaclav and established an undertaking parlor in Abie. Three years later he moved with the two youngest children to Schuyler, where he is in business with Ludwig Bukacek, his second wife’s son.
MARY BUKACEK, milliner, since 1924. Born in Sklenna, Moravia, in 1877, came to Omaha, Nebraska, 1896 and worked as housemaid. She learned her trade as milliner with Mrs. Julia Stenicka and went into business in Clarkson. Her parents, John and Mary, came to this country in 1897 and settled in Clarkson, where they had a meat market.
The first station to the east is Rogers (east of Schuyler), having 75 inhabitants. The Bohemians there are; Anton and Frank Kracl, brothers, proprietors of a garage; Frank Dudek, cashier in the bank; Mr. Cerny, owner of an implement, lumber and hardware business; Victor Bures, general merchandise store; Albert Bobisud, dealer in poultry, eggs, cream and Joseph Dvorak, shoemaker.
To the west of Schuyler is Richland with 125 inhabitants. The following Bohemian families live there; John Stibal, George Shonka and Mr. Holub.
Tabor, Wilson, Dry Creek and Heun are not towns or postoffice or railroad stations. They are rural church and cemetery settlements.
HARDSHIPS OF PIONEER LIFE.
MR. FRANK CEJDA, now living in West Point, Cuming County, Nebraska, writes thus of pioneer days in Colfax county:
“In 1867 I came with my parents to Wisconsin from Bohemia and from Wisconsin we came to West Point in 1870, by wagon from Fremont. During the two years we lived there, father managed to make a living by working for the homesteaders and sawing wood for fuel in the town. In May 1872 he took a homestead in Colfax county, one and a half miles from the present town site of Howell. The entry fee was $14.00, but all the money we could scrape together was $12.00. That was all we paid. How the difference of $2.00 was made up I do not know, but I suspect Mr. E. K. Valentine, at the time Register of the U. S. Land Office in West Point, a kindly man, paid it; father having worked for him.
We now had the claim, an old wagon, an ox and a dug-out on the claim. How to move with one ox! Father was acquainted with Frank Herold of West Point and in conversation discovered that he too had one ox and he lent it to father, not only for moving, but also for breaking ten acres. We loaded the wagon with clothing, bedding (furniture was unknown to us), an old stove and cooking utensils, and prepared to travel the twenty-four miles we had to go. There being no bridges, travelling was hard and the old ox (the other was young) mired in a creek so badly that we had to ask help to pull him out. Finally, we reached our new home and were soon settled, for beside the beds and stove, there was no garniture to place about. There were no barns or sheds and the old wagon was the only farm implements, except the breaking plow that we borrowed to use that season.
We broke ten acres and planted them to corn and potatoes. Our nearest neighbor was Joseph Kovar, two miles southeast and the next nearest Peter Shad, three miles in the same direction. To the north we had no neighbors for fifteen miles or more until the Elkhorn river was reached. Thus we were the last of the first homesteaders in northern Colfax county. As the eldest of three children, I farmed during the next three years, as father was away earning enough to supply us with groceries and flour. Work was scarce and wages low. It took three years’ work to put enough land under cultivation from which to make our living.
During our first summer there, several thousand Indians passed us, going to battle with other tribes or hunting buffalo and they camped at night within half a mile of our dug-out. They asked for food. We had nothing but hard bread, which mother gladly gave them, she was so frightened. Our bread being gone and there being no flour or provisions, and father away in West Point at work, we had nothing to eat. Father did not come for a week and in the meantime we subsisted on wild spinach leaves, which we cooked and ate. So I may say we lived a week on weeds. When father came, he brought flour and groceries. Many times during our pioneer days did we have to ration our food, when provisions began to run low. During the first two years barley coffee and corn mush, cooked in water, was our menu, for we had no cow to give us milk. Meat was rare and wild game also, because there was nothing for it to feed on. When crops began to be raised, grouse or prairie chicken and deer and elk came. They disappeared later, when the country began to be more thickly settled.
Many years after, I appreciated for the first time how frightened my mother must have been, when the Indians asked for bread that day. One day it dawned on me, when I recollected that a young Indian boy asked me how she happened to change color and got so white. I had not noticed it, but he had. As soon as she could get away, she ran over to the neighbors, but there too only the woman was at home. After our first year or two, wild game provided us with meat and hunting became a delight, I had an old mussel loading gun that we had traded for ten bushels of fifteen cent corn. One can imagine what a beauty it was, but I prized it highly. One day, walking through a draw where the grass grew high, I came upon a deer lying down, but I did not see him until he had jumped up, scaring me so that I had no strength to raise the gun until he was two hundred yards away from me, out of shot. Although I have seen as many as twenty-five deer at one time, I never bagged one. Others had better luck, for instance the Novotny brothers in one winter killed sixty.
(To be continued.)
