The Hovel family followed the history of the United States and its socio-economic changes with the decline of human power in farming (and other industries) and the move to the specialization of labor which started in the late 19th century. I refer to this as agricultural congruence. Of the nine children born to my parents who lived to adulthood one farmed, one was a builder, and the others were mainly in varied professional, education, and managerial/administrative endeavors. The Hovel family was swept up in the waves of history, following its crests and troughs, which mark good and not so good points. Martin Hovel (Havel), my great grandfather, arrived in the US in with his parents and siblings in July 1868. He established his own farm on the unbroken plains of north central Iowa on land he purchased in Dec 1877, a few months after making his way west from Wisconsin. His son Rudy, my grandfather, bought that farm and then moved to Sun Prairie in 1930. An earlier post focused on Martin and Rudy, but this post will focus on Martin's father, Joseph (Josef) with a look at the congruence and dissidence to which Josef and his wife Anna and children their family from immigration and setting up a farm in the New World.
 |
Josef Havel transcribed and translated birth certificate, 1808
Completed for author by Richard D'Amelio |
The Havel family emigrated from southwestern Bohemia to the United States by departing Bremen, Germany and they arrived at the Port of Baltimore on July 18, 1868. They were part of the large wave of immigrants, mainly from from Europe to the United States. Bohemia, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in which the formal language and education was in German. In varied US Census records we have them reported as from Germany or from Austria. The family's hometown at time of immigration was Dolni Chrastany, which was part of the German ethnic settlement of Bohemia often referred to as the Sudetenland. The Sudetenland became famous with the Munich Accords in the fall of 1938 when Britain allowed Germany to take over the area without so much a consult with its then home country Czechoslovakia. The Havel family ancestral village, as far back as can be traced, however, is not part of the Sudetenland, even though it is closer to the German border than Dolni Chrastany. That village is Ratiborova Lhota. By 1870, almost 13 percent of the US population was foreign born, the peak of near 15% would be reached in 1890. The Hovel family was part of a move of 30 million persons that departed Europe in a 100 year period between 1815 and 1915. First from nations that identified as White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, to later migrants being Slavs from Eastern Europe and Catholics from southern Europe. It was a diaspora of people seeking a better life for themselves and their family. The influx of Irish and Catholic immigrants led to the Know-Nothing Party and even violent activities against the immigrant groups.
 |
To Help with the Ancestry
Hovel Line |
All told, one family member, Catherine Hovel Popp recalled a journey of over 16 weeks for the family. They departed Dolni Chrastany, went to Bremen Germany, departed Bremen, arrived in Baltimore, left Baltimore and arrived at Jefferson, WI. The family sailed on the ship Baltimore which was inaugurated on March 1, 1868, so they travelled on a new ship, but yet one better than the Titanic which sunk in the North Atlantic 44 years after the Havel voyage. In 1870, The German Lloyd line ships averaged the transatlantic crossing from Bremen to Baltimore in 11 days and 13 hours, one way. While cost is not necessarily precise, some have estimated the journey to be about $30 per person in 1868 for steerage, or about $685 in today's dollars. Hence, the ten Havel family members from 60 year old Josef to infant Wenzel cost about $6,850 in today's currency. Not a small amount today, and probably an even greater amount to the family.
 |
SS Baltimore Passenger Log, Left bracket marks Havel Line
Arrival at Baltimore, MD, 18 Jul l868 |
It did not take them long to get back to farming. Less than ten days after disembarking in Baltimore, Josef Hovel had purchased an 80 acre farm between Jefferson and Fort Atkinson for $3,000 from William Behrend and his wife. A few weeks later, on August 9, they sold had sold their farm in Dolni Chrastany to Johann Reindl and his wife for 5,000 flö.W.(österreichischer Währung/ Austrian Gulden currency), which in a roundabout, but not necessarily correct calculation, equates to about $4,000 in 1868. It likely included the meager farm supplies, as they would depart with few household belongings. The benefit of the US was land to be had at lower price. The approximate 45 acre Dolni Chrastany farm sale value would be about $89/acre, while the farm near Jefferson would be $37.50/acre.
 |
Josef Havel Immigration Arrival Form
|
The family migration in 1868 is an example of chain migration. First, they came as a family, and second, a person from the home village already lived in the Jefferson area. Jakob Fitzl from the same Bohemian village had arrived in this area in late fall in 1866. The oldest Havel daughter, Anna, was born in 1848, and would marry Jakob in 1869 at St John the Baptist Catholic Church in Jefferson. It turns out they were second cousins. Jakob's grandmother was Marie Havel Fitzl, Joseph's aunt a sister to Josef's father, Frantisek. (We will meet up with Wenzel Fitzl again, who seemingly had a proclivity to marry widows.) While many commentators place political or religious measures as the means for migration, I believe it was purely economic for the Havel family. Economic opportunity for the children to start their own farms on the plentiful land in the US would have been easier to accomplish than to find a farm for the children in the poor soils of the old country. The children ranged in age from less than 10 months of age to 21 years of age at time of arrival in Baltimore. All of the children were married in the US. All eight of the children would at some point would farm. One child born in Bohemia in July 1853 died less than seven months later. One son of Josef and Anna Havel would move from farming into other endeavors, not successfully, which in part led to a tragedy, which I
storied in 2017.
Farming was the chosen occupation of the Havel (Hovel came into use later in time by two sons, Martin and John), and the expansive land in the US would have drawn them as it did many other immigrants. The search for good and available farmland took all but one daughter to northcentral Iowa. The daughter who remained in Wisconsin was Rose who had married a man from the Jefferson area, George Kachel; they acquired Josef's farm in 1882 for $3,000, plus $200 of debt in March 1882. The sale price included all farm equipment and all but a few pieces of household furnishings, a downsizing methodology that involves little effort. The Kachel family would later sell this farm and move to a farm just west of Whitewater, WI.
 |
Joseph Havel Farm between Jefferson and Ft Atkinson, WI
1872 Plat Map (Identified as Haffell on the plat map) |
Josef passed away at aged 74 in Sept 1882. The 1885 Iowa Census shows his wife Anna and the youngest son, Wenzel (b Sep 1867) living with daughter/sibling Marie Havel Hofmeister and her husband Anton. The Hofmeister family lived and farmed in Union Township, Worth Co, south of Manly at the time. Also farming in Union Township was John Hovel and his family and Jakub and Anna Havel Fitzl, as was Joseph and his wife who would later move a bit south to adjoining Cerro Gordo Co, and then move to Minnesota. Martin was in nearby Lincoln Township. One daughter, Katherine, married Emil Popp and farmed to the east of Worth County in Mitchell County.
The Havel family arrived in the US while the nation was in the throes of reconstruction from the Civil War. It was also five years before the major 1873 recession. Josef farmed his acreage in Jefferson, with the respective agricultural census records reported that he tilled 35 acres tilled in 1870 (which would be land tilled in 1869) and 50 acres tilled in 1880 (which would be tilled land in 1879). Oats, rye, Indian corn, and wheat were the main grains grown, but he also grew a good number of potatoes. He had three milk cows from which he made 300 pounds of butter in 1880. Three milk cows were reported in 1870 but with a production of 90 lbs of butter. He has two horses. He raised a few swine in both years, and reported a similar value of livestock for both census'--about $400. While Josef was growing wheat, the pesky cinch bug became prevalent in Wisconsin. It was this pest which led Wisconsin from one of the top wheat producing states to become the dairy state. Here again, a diversified operation may have been helpful to the small farmer at a time when agriculture was about to dramatically change as explained in the first post.
 |
| Josef Havel Declaration for Citizenship, 2 Nov 1869 |
Josef began his farming career in the foothills of the Bohemian Mountains in the Village of Dolni Chrastany. Plots of land were often scattered, and were generally long narrow strips. In the US he had one large contiguous piece of land. Hence, the simple act of cultivation was completely different for him in the US, than what he had in Bohemia. Further, the foothills of the mountains were notorious for poor soil. Even with conservation practices the years of cultivation would have depleted the soil, and such soil would lack the natural fertility of what the family would find in the fertile prairies of the Midwest, particularly the virgin prairie soil farmed in Iowa which Martin farmed. In Bohemia, the agricultural settlements were in small villages. Each farm home would have a small garden area and generally an courtyard with house on one side and outbuildings surrounding. In many places there was a village herder who watched the livestock, and a person would also watch the fowl out prancing around the village pond. I certainly hope such pond was not used for drinking water.
Joseph and his family would have experienced some culture shock in the transformation from the backwater of Southwest Bohemia to the US. New language and customs, different methods of farming, more travel to basic items like a blacksmith. No wonder, many recent immigrants congregated with persons of similar nature in which they established ethnic enclaves whether in cities or in rural areas. Jefferson, WI was settled by many Germans, and the Havel family would have felt at home at least language wise, and perhaps with some customs. One can also think of the Lanskroner Bohemians (Eastern Bohemians who were mostly ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland) who settled first in the in the Waterloo area to Watertown, and later spread west to Sun Prairie (along the Hwy 19 corridor), sharing language and customs with the German population of Watertown. Growing up in Sun Prairie, the city was home to many surnames from the Landskron region: Motl, Skalitzky, Blaska, Freidel, Langer, Schuster, Benisch just to name a few, The Duscheck family who was from the Landskron region, Martin's spouse was Amelia Duscheck, is a prime example, first settling in Jefferson County southwest of Watertown and later moving to a farm just northeast of Sun Prairie.
 |
Joseph Grave Marker, Bohemian Catholic Cemetery
Plymouth, IA (Findagrave) |
I have to think that the simple act of travel from Baltimore to Chicago and then likely to Milwaukee would have given my Havel ancestors a view of the immense size and variety of cultures and geography of which America was comprised. They would have experienced the miasma of humanity on the ship and particularly at port where many varied cultures and languages collided. On their way to Wisconsin, they would have traveled through cities that comprised the burgeoning industrial heartland of the US (and later become the noted Rustbelt); their arrival in Chicago, may have taken them past the massive stockyards which had been established in 1865. Martin likely speculated that his grandson, Roy would marry a woman from Chicago whose paternal grandfather left the mines of rural Pennsylvania and worked in the stockyards of Chicago in about 1900. The broad expanse of the Iowa prairies would have been daunting to Joseph and the older children who were used to being encapsulated by the rolling hills and forests of Southwest Bohemia. All but one of the eight Havel children, at some point in their lives, farmed the rich prairie soil of northern Iowa. The youngest, Wenzel first farmed in Iowa's Mitchell County before moving just across the border to Mower Co, MN. The one who did not move to Iowa farmed in Wisconsin The sheer sense of scale would have been daunting to Josef who perhaps wondered what he was getting himself into.
 |
Deed from Behrend to Joseph Havel
17 Jul 1868, Jefferson Co Courthouse
|
I wonder if Joseph realized how much the decision he and his wife made affected the lives of their descendants? Their move allowed his descendants to advance in chosen fields, avoid being under Nazi and later Communist suppression. Although, I am sure some people in Fitchburg thought I may have well been a planner in the Eastern bloc. As I have long said, if the Fitchburg Days Festival had a dunk tank and I was in it, the line would have been long.
Up next, on Agricultural Congruence I will look at the taxing and tedious time and incongruent aspects of agriculture and peasant life in in the Old Country. For peasant serfs it was an era of great difficulty with most of the known history of the family spanning much of the second serfdom. Serfdom was in effect for most all generations of the Havel family until 1848, although some restrictions were lessened in the latter part of the 18th century. My peasant serf ancestors were not dominated not so much by the Hapsburg Crown, but by the Lords of the Domain, the seigneurs, and their overseers, the wealthy absentee landlords who demanded much and gave nothing in return. It was just above slavery on the economic ladder. The family owned a farm for several generations in Ratiborova Lhota, under the Krumlov domain. Most famous of the Krumlov domain is the city Cesky Krumlov which is a United Nations World Heritage Site. The robot labor of the Havel family helped give the domain its wealth to build and maintain such a city.
