Thankful Decisions

 All of us are affected by the decisions we did or did not make. With Thanksgiving 2022 being this week Thursday, many persons tend to look back and in their mind at least give thanks to the blessings and gifts they have received either for that year, or even prior years. However, we are also affected by the decisions made by people we never knew, whether they be currently living, or have passed away. This includes decisions made by our ancestors.  As I was doing genealogy this past year, and having accomplished more reading, I have come to be thankful for the decisions made by our ancestors to emigrate. This post will focus on the decisions of our Bohemian ancestors, which actually includes a few lines in the family tree. 

Rudy Hovel Farmstead in Sun Prairie, WI; abt 1957

Josef and Anna Havel with their eight surviving children emigrated in 1868 arriving in Baltimore, MD on 18 July. It was a four month journey, with Joseph at 60 years old, and his youngest child less than a year old. Josef and Anna were from southwest Bohemian village of Dolni Chrastany. Then there was Josef Duscheck, whose daughter, Amelia, would marry Martin Havel, the third oldest child of Josef and Anna, Josef D and his family came over 14 years earlier arriving in August 1954, according to citizenship papers.  Those same papers indicate that he and his family arrived at the port of Quebec. Josef Duscheck was a busy man having fathered, with two different wives, sixteen children (of which I know of), six of whom, including Amelia, were born in the United States by his second wife Rosalie. Rosalie is a second great grandmother, and mother to Amelia. Joseph and Rosalie were from the Landskron area in northeast Bohemia, probably not far from the border with Moravia. This region consisted primarily of long time Germans and was, like Dolni Chrastany, part of the Sudetenland. 

Dolni Chrastany, Stable Cadastre ~1836

The Havel and Duscheck families were not unique for their time, both are evidence of chain migration, whole families moving to the US and usually meeting persons they already knew. The Havel family joined Jakub Fitzl, who was from Dolni Chrastany and arrived earlier. The Duscheck family was also part of chain migration. Around the Waterloo, WI west to Sun Prairie, east to Watertown and south in to Jefferson County, many common surnames for the area can be found come from the Landskron region--Maly, Langer, Blaska, Betlach, Motl, Skalitzky just to name a some. As I was searching through records on the Duscheck family last winter, I was surprised at how many surnames I recognized from growing up in Sun Prairie, WI--and those are the ones I could read in the odd German Kurrent script. Chain migration involved whole families as we see with the Havel and Duscheck families. Chain migrants tended to take less risk, seek less accumulation of wealth and would tend to marry in their own ethnic group. There is one more ancestor who came from Bohemia, and she did not fit the chain migration mold.

Martin Hovel and Amelia Duscheck Hovel

Teresia Kamen, my Dad's grandma, arrived in the US at the port of Baltimore in June 1872. She was what is referred to as a lone wolf migrant, she was by herself. What is unusual is that most migrants from Bohemia were part of chain migration yet she was not. Further, however, most lone wolf migrants were male, she, of course, was not male. A remarkable bit of daring for the young woman from Ujezd, breaking social constructs common at the time. As it turns out, Ujezd is not far from Dolni Chrastany where the Havel family had lived until leaving for the US. 

Kamen House in Ujezd
Stable Cadastre ~1836

Emigration involves a series of factors, and it is not my intent to go through the varied factors, but to indicate why we were fortunate for the migration of these families and individuals. There were a number of significant events that occurred, and I believe these family groups were able to better sustain here in the U.S. than if they were back in Bohemia. I will cover just a few of the major events. First, there was the panic of 1873, starting in October, which led to the long depression which lasted until March of 1879.This actually began with bank defaults in Europe. During this time frame Martin Havel and most of his siblings and would move from Wisconsin to start farming the fresh prairie soils of Iowa. Theresia Kamen would marry Mathias Pitzenberger in 1873. Sometime before 1870 the Duscheck family had moved to just north of Sun Prairie, WI. 

Theresia Kamen with her Grandson Roy Hovel

Almost each decade following would see a recession until perhaps the 2010's. Our ancestors experienced similar events to the the Dot Com crash of 2000. Of course their was the Great Depression. Many farmers were able to better adjust to the Great Depression than non-farmers. Rudy Hovel, my grandfather took on his Sun Prairie, WI farm on 4 March 1929, just months before the stock market crash, although the depression is said to actually have started in August, two months earlier.

Ida Pitzenberger, daughter of  Mathias & Theresia Kamen Pitzenberger
and Rudy Hovel, son of Martin and Amelia
Ida's parents were both immigrants to the United States

Two of the largest events were the two World Wars in which then Czechoslovakia was in the middle. While the US was involved in both conflicts, it is safe to say that living and enduring territory under siege is quite different from being safe on the home front. The continental US was never really threatened during those engagements. Perhaps the worst situation was WWII, and the turn over of Sudetenland to the Germans. The Lanskron area and Dolni Chrastany were in the Sudetenland. Further, those persons of German descent were required to join the Germany army. Not asked, required. Now, the Havel family was originally from Ratiborova Lhota, which was not part of the Sudetenland, and was said to not have been settled by those of German origin. Although, given my DNA ancestry I have to think they perhaps have some German blood. However, Josef Havel's wife may well have been German, as her surname Jodl, and her being from Hlvatace would indicate. Theresia Kamen, from Ujezd may not have been part of the Sudetenland, but I  have not been able to figure that out as of this moment.

Rudy Hovel Farm and Martin Hovel farm
1913 Plat map

Of course, my Dad was in the European Theater of the WWII, and had his trials and tribulations, as did his parents on the home front. Although I have to think that those kin living in Bohemia at the time were in a frightful situation. Czech conscripts may well have been sent to the dreaded Eastern front. If Colonel Klink is to be regarded as a reliable source, he kept threatening to send Sgt Schultz to the Eastern front, i.e. the Russian front. Joking aside, we often hear of the difficulties of our soldiers but that made me think about the German soldiers and the army conscripts, and the villages they occupied. War is terrible. All are human, although war may bring out the worst in our race. Little known is that starting in about 1948 Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, perhaps as many as 250,000, with over 14,000 killed. We had some Jodl ancestors living in Dolni Chrastany, at house #18 when my sister, dad and aunt visited the ancestral homeland in the early 1990's. The Jodl family has been long in Bohemia, since before 1737, so maybe they were Bohemian, or if originally ethnic Germans they were considered sufficient Czech by that time. Or, that Dolni Chrastany, as a small rural outpost, was not worth worrying any ethnic German settlers.  

Josef Havel farm near Fort Atkinson, WI
(identified as Haffell) 1872 Plat Map

As bad as the wars were the most striking evidence of the conditions of Bohemia can be seen in the visit of Eastern Europe, including Bohemia, by the renowned African-American educator Booker T Washington. In Tara Zahara's 2016 book, The Great Departure, Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the making of the Free World  she comments on the situation Booker T Washington found during his 1910 visit to the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. First, Washington, she says, saw many parallels of the racial politics in the US and the social terrain of the Austrian Empire. Washington would conclude that the condition of the

Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was 'more like the Negroes in the Southern States than is true of any other race or class in Europe.' Not only were they agricultural people like the slaves, but they were discriminated by the ‘dominant classes’ of Austro-Hungry. It was not by skin color as in US, but the language they spoke. He concluded that peasants, workers, and Jews of Eastern Europe lived in more debased conditions than African Americans in the south, he made this observation after touring a desolate Bohemia farm. (p. 66)

Our Bohemian Havel and Duscheck lines were primarily farmers in the old country, with the Havel's farming more than forty acres, and the Duschecks perhaps half amount or less, although I lack the source documents for the Duschecks that I have for the Havel side. Part of Booker T Washington's trip, per Zahara, was to look to obtain workers from Eastern Europe to replace African Americans working in the cotton fields and sugar plantations. Washington would discard this idea in part due to the poverty he found in the villages, including Bohemia. Zahara writes: "He was so distraught by the poverty he encountered in Austria-Hungary that he began to sympathize with the movements to limit immigration. He believed the arrival of destitute Eastern Europeans would be a new kind of 'racial problem'." (p. 67)

Martin and Amelia 

To me, this was an eye opener as to the conditions in Eastern Europe, including Bohemia in the early part of the 20th century. It is instructive that Washington found that the poverty among our Eastern European kin was worse than the plight of the African-Americans in the United States at that time. Our ancestors moved from serfdom to subjects, to free peasants, but that did not mean discrimination as a peasant was still not present, or that they could well make their way in the world. But, yet according to Booker T Washington's account it would appear our kin, in the old country, had little means or opportunity to increase their standard of living. Maybe there was even a digression in the standard of living. While Booker T Washington was visiting Europe in 1910, Amelia and Martin were farming, with 22 year old Rudy at home who was also farming. By 1913, Rudy would own his own 80 acres, purchased from his parents, and he was married in February of that year to Ida, whose mother was Theresia Kamen. Theresia and her husband, Mathias Pitzenberger, had apparently retired from farming in 1910 and were devoting their time to their general store in Festina, IA. Josef and Anna Havel died in the 1880's, Josef Duscheck in the 1870's, but Rosalie is still alive, but has moved off the farm in the town of Bristol and is living in the village of Sun Prairie with her son Edward. 

Rosalie Duscheck (L) with daughter Marian Lohneis 
and granddaughter Anna Lohneis (center)

Given the abject poverty encountered in rural Bohemia during Booker T Washington's visit, I have to say that the lives my kin had in the US was probably much better, at least from a socio-economic standpoint, than those of any kin they had in the old country. Dolni Chrastany, Horni Houzovec and Ujezd were definitely small rural outposts of Bohemia. I doubt Martin had any regrets in purchasing land with the deep prairie soil in Iowa, compared to the slopes and tired soils of Bohemia. Nor, would Josef Duscheck who first bought a farm in the town of Milford in Jefferson County, WI before moving to the town of Bristol. Tara Zahara seems to think the migration from Eastern Europe was important to the making of the west. She does point out, however, that immigrants were in a worse situation here in the US or other western than what they had been in the old country. Exploitation did occur and there were instances of human trafficking. My ancestors  did not fall into that situation, but they helped the nation by providing food for a growing population. I am, however, thankful this Thanksgiving for the decisions of my Bohemian ancestors to emigrate to the United States. I think they made the right choice. 

I express Thanksgiving wishes to the readers of this blogpost. May you be grateful for the decisions you and your ancestors have made. Even decisions thought to be wrong can turn out to be a learning experience or a silver lining.