"To America" pg 3 - Emigration from the Village of Bernatice

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“To America” – Emigration from the Village of Bernartice and vicinity

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THE SEEKING OF A NEW HOME

Saying goodbye to individuals or to whole families before their departure to America was a very moving experience, with a large attendance of relatives and neighbors and sometimes it featured dancing parties. Before a city baker by the name of Jan Hrdlicka from Bernartice left in 1866, he gave money to build a stone cross on the square in front of the little chapel of St. Florian, as an expression of his prayer to God for protection of his whole family on the journey over the ocean. Shortly before his journey across the ocean began, somewhere around 1770 - 1780, Hynek Bouska gave 10 gl. for the purpose of building a stone cross at a junction of roads leading to Jestrebice.

The first emigrants were directed especially to New York, but most of them continued on further inland. Among the first who came to Cleveland, Ohio was Vavrinec Velfl from Borovany. Immigrants, who passed Lake Michigan, settled in the city of Racine, Wisconsin. In 1854 there was Jan Ligler, a hatter from Borovany, who moved to Racine and later he was the owner of a shop trading in hats and furs. In this year also came Frantisek and Martin Bouska from Borovany and Vaclav Mikes from Sepekov, all who settled in Spillville, Iowa. To the same place twenty years later came Mr. and Mrs. Neuzil, who also brought their five children. The character of the local landscape, which was hilly, but also the hard work ethic involving the whole family at a nearby farm, reminded them of their life in Southern Bohemia. The fourth of their children, Karel, tenaciously worked to achieve a good education, and this later assisted his entry to the religious Benedictine Order. There, he received the name of Prokop, and at the end of 1888 he was consecrated as a priest. His was a congregation that was unusually large and intensely pastoral. To this he added organizational and publishing activities, which were imbued with a warm love of his fellow Czech peoples. These activities and traits brought him a good regard, and helped him to achieve the chair of Abbot of the Benedictine Order in Lisla by Chicago. Some of the Czech immigrants passed by Detroit, Michigan and came to the main river of Illinois, the Mississippi, which led them to St. Louis. This was unless they did not prefer the Ohio River, which also led them close to the port city at Mississippi, having been founded only recently, in 1764 by Canadian Frenchmen. St. Louis was a large city, and there lived many Germans, and at the beginning it was suitable for Czechs as well, as many of them could speak German at least a little bit. In St. Louis, March of 1854, there was established the first Czech Club in the United States, as well as boasting that the city had two universities. In March1865 Bishop Jan Valerian Jirsik from Ceske Budejovice received an urgent request from the Czech community of St. Jan Nepomucky in St. Louis, asking that he send a good priest to serve those “forsaken and spiritually needy countrymen coming from the Tabor, Strakonice and Klatovy districts.” The bishop had a wish, to find in the Ceske Budejovice region a priest, who was ready to undertake this very real need.

Vrcovice – J. Hesoun was born

Following a request made by the Bishop, an answer was received of Father Josef Hesoun, who was a native of Vrcovice, near Pisek, and who was also a chaplain in Jinin near Strakonice. By September, he had begun his journey, and boarded a ship in Bremenhaven. Thanks to records made in his diary about navigation, and letters which he sent to his friend, it is possible to make quite an accurate image about the difficulties that emigrants faced in that time. Reverend Hesoun boarded the ship on Sunday, September 10, 1865. The coastal cannon saluted the ship as it left the port, and an orchestra played. After an intermediate landing in the south of England at Southampton, the ship again left port on the13th of September, and was soon at high sea. On Friday September 15th Fr. Hesoun wrote in his diary, that the wind began to blow more strongly, "the ship very much swayed about and there are a lot of difficulties and sea sicknesses among the travelers, especially the women.”

Extracts taken from the diary record for the next days of the journey:

- "16th September, on Saturday, the Feast of St. Ludmila: There was a severe wind all the day, which rolled the ship very much, and so the decks are quite empty and still."

- “17th September, Sunday: This night was very horrible, the wind blew even more severe, and stormy waves tossed without ceasing our ship, and so it was not possible even to think about some sleep.”

- "18th of September, Monday: This night I slept rather better than the last one, although the wind didn't stop, but was in fact even stronger. Till now the wind blew from the side against us, but today it turned directly against us, so they had to draw all the sails down.”

- “19th September, Tuesday - This night was really bad. When I woke up I found that the ship was more than ever before being tossed about with the waves. I heard a horrible roaring of the stormy sea, and a splashing of water on the deck and at our little window. In the morning, when I was dressed, I hurried along, or rather lurched up to the deck, and what a view was spread out in front of my eyes! It was a view both full of dread and beauty all in one on a stormy sea surface! But no, this time it was not a flat surface, but rather they were just high mountains and deep valleys of water, each cast another and each dwindled in another. I had read a lot about these ‘water-mountains and valleys’ created by the sea in storm and I imagined it as quite animated. It is against all reality, when we look at it with our own eyes. That impression is not possible to describe, as no painter with his brush, or poet with words, is able to do justice to it. It is, as I have already said, a view full of dread and beauty all in one. The heart is shaking when it looks at the prickly water element, and in spite of this it also looks as if the eye cannot have enough to see, things so sublime and other things never seen before...” “Soon enough, everyone begins to feel that now will come the time of a violent and uncertain struggle with the stormy elements. A woman in the ‘tween-decks’ gave premature birth to stillborn twins no doubt because of a pure mortal fear, a poor woman in childbed in such circumstances!”

“20th September, Wednesday: Early in the morning the wind was even stronger and enraged waves ran up against the ship as if they wanted to devour it each time, and the ship shook like before an enraged enemy. It shook in all its internal parts, and it became a game between angry elements. Soon the sea and the storm and the ship were engaged in this whole wildness....” “It is a terrible feeling. It is not possible with this awful tossing of the ship to stand or to sit, nor to eat, as everything is lurching and losing its balance. A mariner, a young man, fell down to the depth of the sea. It was not possible even to think fast enough to help him. In the afternoon, again a horrible wave scared us as it rolled entirely over the deck, and even poured over an opening of the steam boiler machine. The fire in the boiler was partially quenched and the ship shook with a terrible jerk, and everything on the ship shook and lurched. The danger was very great because the steam boiler could burst and it would be our end.”

- “Thursday, September 21st, the Feast of St. Matthew: Oh, what a night it was! Surely, the worst in my life up to now! In the evening I went to bed, but it was not possible to sleep because of my fright and the awful tossing of the ship. There was such a din of noise coming from the inside the ship and also from the outside. The storm raged all through the night, but it looked to me that early in the morning, it came to the highest point. The ship and its passengers were shaken and thrown about so much, that everything that was not firmly fixed in place, tumbled down. Never for a moment was there peace and sometimes it looked as if the ship could topple over or that the ship could not resist the forceful rush of the waves. I stood up and dressed and waited for the shipwreck, because it looked like it could come soon. My soul was dejected. Now I understood what was meant by something that I had heard before – those who don't know to pray or don’t want to learn should not go out on the sea. This time of danger did not take a long time, and the sea was once again peaceful and there was not a sign of danger. Everything recovered on the ship and all looked again with eyes raised in hope to the firmament."

On The 17th day of crossing, which was Tuesday, 26th September, the ship came to the coast of America. Father Hesoun wrote, "You cannot think that there is anything more beautiful and picturesque than to come to New York in such bright weather. In that time everyone forgets all the hardship and troubles of the previous journey and they look with new hope to the future." Two days later he set out for the next part of the journey going from New York to St. Louis. He arrived on the 1st of October, and there just a few days later he began his religious pastoral work among his countrymen. An immense quantity of work waited for him, and he wrote about the condition of his "regrettable poor countrymen.” He told about how the Czech people were divided on two sides, either for religion or as agnostics. Father Hesoun told of what he observed concerning religious buildings. “The Czechs have only a simple wooden church and two rooms for a priest and these are also made of wood. Under the church, and partly under ground, is a schoolroom. The school is not in operation, because there is no teacher who could undertake the teaching of these youth and so the Czech children must go to other schools or they go nowhere." The optimistically disposed priest began to pay off “the rusty stain on the Czech church", which was a debt of 2000 dollars, and he asked his friends in the old country to help him establish a Czech library. He wrote to his friends, "Gather what you can, as high water sweeps, to be able to send it to us for our forsaken countrymen."

This appeal that came from the end of 1865 had a remarkable acceptance. It was responded to immediately, with the collection of educational and instructive textbooks, books for amusement, as well as religious books. Professors and teachers, students, members of the clergy, booksellers, editors, and local townspeople gave these. The summer of 1866 brought sad news on this endeavor in a newspaper. "We announce to all the wonderful donors that we must delay the consignment of books that have now been collected for America, and which had been scheduled for July. Due to the disturbances of war, we must delay it for a better and more peaceful time. In his esteemed name Father Josef Hesoun, gives to all the benefactors who contributed with anything for the establishment of a Czech school library in St. Louis, the most heartfelt thanks, and he calls from the depth of his heart, “Praise the Lord."

In a letter written on the 20th of December, 1865, Father Hesoun writes; "As regards the school, I just feel an upset, as our youth are becoming quite estranged from us and where are we to find a good teacher who will be able to take this place? It would need to be a man who is full of self-sacrifice and diligence. If we can get the school youth to come together, where do we find the other one, the teacher because only one part will not make the whole? For a better hope for the future, it is important to have the children together, but how? We have no schools and so I cannot gather them together during the day, but only in the evening, and only those who want to come. These are the older children, who work in the factories. If the school does not run, then the local community will always be poor and its permanence is very doubtful." Father Hesoun did not write only about the need for a school, but also about the life of whole families. "After one of my first Sunday’s here, I visited a Czech community about 5 German miles far from the city, and there found about 30 families. The next week I went to another Czech community, about 12 German miles in distance from the city, where about 25 families lived. The way to this community is from the most part by train, then by postal coach and finally also on horseback. They are all working and living only by cultivation of the land and by the raising of cattle. Here however they don't live as in our country one beside another, but rather they build up their house in the middle of the land that they have bought, and so they live quite very far from each other. Some of them are as far as a quarter of an hour from another family, and some even further. This makes their life very lonely. How many types of factories there are in the city! Our people here in the city are employed in various trades, where they work as craftsman or as common workers in the factories. They might also work by the river where they load and unload goods from ships. Many of them have already purchased their little houses or they have bought a plot for building a home on."

The American city with the highest number of Czech peoples soon became Chicago. The first of our countrymen came there in 1852 and 1853. When the first immigrant from the Bernartice region, Frantisek Kalal from Krenovice, came there, only a few tens of Czech peoples lived there. Chicago was important as a major railway junction between the East and the West, and with this importance, the population rapidly increased. It came from being a city with 20,000 people in 1850, to one just ten years later with a 100,000 people. Within the next ten years, in 1870, the city had 300,000 people. In 1863 Chicago there lived several hundred Czech families, and in 1870 there were already about 10,000 countrymen.

We find testimony given in an article of the magazine “American”, about the beginning of Czech life in this city, and purporting to be that of an emigrant-tailor. "…We hired a small room, where there was a bed frame, one chair, a table for sewing and that was all. We had left feather beds in New York, and the neighbor in the next room had a stove. He released for us a bit of warmth so that we would be able to work. On the bed frame we put hay and then we covered it with a coat and skirt. At night we collected some wood for our neighbor, because he heated a bit also for us. I later got a small desk, two irons and a bench. Then we bought a stove, a bed, and a chair. For the first year, we saved 140 dollars in gold..." “.... The very first day I obtained a job in lumber yard, where they gave me for an hour of very hard work, 50 cents, and when I endured this work for a whole day, I earned 5 dollars. It was for me, who was used to bad earnings in New York, a wage that was really unheard of. That is why I wrote about it to other countrymen, and more of them came to me from there. When I looked around in Chicago, I found that there were five Czech families.”

The settler from the Tabor region wrote to the "American" magazine "...To get acquainted with some countrymen, we used to go to the church of St. Peter and Paul at Polk street, and then looked at the books of the people praying to find who was Czech. We then approached them and frankly shook hands, and so we met each other. On Sunday we went to a Czech pub to dance. There were neither streets, nor sidewalks, and the mud came up to our knees. My wife carried her shoes in her hands when we went to dance, walking there barefooted and only just in front of the pub, did she put her shoes on.” The teacher Josef Jirasek from Drazic, used to play in a band that performed in two pubs. He came to New York in 1853 and from there via Philadelphia in 1857 to Chicago. He later wrote about it, "There were very nice Czech dances, where everybody was pleasant to each other, and where they were enthusiastic with national feelings. They always gathered together in good order, and they socialized and partied without having to call the police".

In years 1869–1871 emigrants from Bernartice and vicinity settled further west, in South Dakota, later again largely in Chicago. The goal of emigrants was also the city of Baltimore (Maryland) and sates of Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Texas.

FRANTIŠEK MATUŠKA: LETTER FROM THE TRAVEL OFFICE

Bremen, March 4, 1885

KARESCH & STOTZKÝ

Bremen

Bahnhofstrasse No. 29

Mr. František Matoušek

Sepekov

Bohemia

Based on your message that you would undertake this journey, we have reserved for you the necessary places in the steamship HALLER, which will leave Bremen on March 18 for Baltimore and we are sending you $ 21,25, which Mr. Vodňanský will give you toward payment by post.

To come here on time, you need to leave from your next railway station not later than on March 14. Pay the ticket from Tábor to Prague and then from the Prague state railway station over Leipzig to Bremen, as Mr. Vodňanský will instruct you.

At the railway station, identify yourself with the attached ticket for the inn. The best way will be to put the ticket on your hat to be recognized immediately and received by the correct innkeeper, which will provide you the appropriate services for a cheap price. Don't let anyone persuade you to take accommodation in another inn, as it has already occurred that passengers have missed the departures of their ships and incurred additional costs by waiting for another ship.

We wish you a pleasant journey to Bremen, sincerely

Kareš & Stotzký.

Warning: The railway timetables in Germany have now changed and in consequence the passengers will have longer stops. The journey to Bremen lasts now longer and you may not leave for Bremen later than given in this letter. lf you leave later, you will miss the departure of the ship and you will be obliged to wait here for the next ship at your own cost.

THOSE WHO DID NOT REACH AMERICA …

The dream of emigration did not come true for many.

Tailors' assistant Jan Šarkant was arrested in 1885 and sent back home. He claimed not to want to go to America and to wish to work in Hamburg.

The twenty-two year old František Matuška from Sepekov received an invitation to visit America from his half-brother Jan Doubek, already living in St. Louis for several years, and from the parish priest, Mr. Josef Hesoun. Mr. Matuška obtained from America all the travel documents, and the passenger ticket was also already booked. The frontier office in Podmokly arrested Mr. Matuška and sent him back for attempting unauthorized emigration to America. A penalty of 40 guilders was then imposed on him in accordance with the Ministerial Order (dated September 30), no. 198, 1817 of the imperial law manual to the hands of the Sepekov community fund of paupersn, and in the case of uncollectibility replaced by eight days of prison. At the time of arrest, Matuška had no documents but the certificate of native citizenship. He tried to explain to the officers that he did not want to emigrate, and that he wanted just visit his brother.

The nineteen years old mason apprentice Hynek Veverka, son of the labourer Jakub Veverka from Zběšice, was arrested by an officer already on the Ražice railway station. On April 27, 1885, the k. k. district executive decided to convict Veverka for the offence of unauthorized emigration in America „to a penalty of 10 guilders to the hands of the Zběšice community fund of paupers, and in the case of uncollectibility replaced by 48 hours of prison“. At the arrest, a thoroughly hidden amount of 10 guilders and three tickets with notes were taken from Veverka. The first one included the note “from Ražice to Cheb - from Cheb to Hamburg“. On the second a calligraphic inscription “I am going to Františkovy Lázně (Francis Springs)“ was written. The third one included an address “Frank Piner, west 20 str. A 556, Cigago Ilinojis“, written with a sloppy hand. Veverka did not deny anything during the interrogation: "I was already in Upper Austria for a year using my certificate of native citizenship and have worked there and I also wanted to travel to America with my certificate of native citizenship and domestics' book, with which I have already had worked in Budweis, as my salary here is bad and I suffer from misery. I did not want to run away, everyone knew that, and the officer also knew about that and could arrest me on the Ražice railway station and I was thus sent back by the k. k. district executive.“ The money taken in Písek was later given back to him.

Some of the emigrants could leave Austria easily but could not reach the dreamt about America either. When the ship “Cimbria“ sank on January 19, 1883 about 450 persons drowned, including Marie Tlášková from Srlín and other persons from the Milevsko region. Two years later the ship “Elbe“ sank. The OTAVAN weekly published the following article on February 15, 1885 about this event:

“Concerning the drowning of Antonie Veverová from Květov near Milevsko on the ship “Elbe“.

Antonie Veverová, who was traveling to America with her uncle Jan Vevera, who was saved after the “Elbe“ ship disaster, was a comely twenty year old girl, a skillful seamstress, and wanted to travel to America with her uncle un-coerced. The uncle painted a picture of very dangerous travel to America and her parents, living in good conditions, did not want to hear anything about her going. The girl, nevertheless, did not want to abandon her intention and they finally approved. During the farewell, the parents cried along with the whole village. One old man remarked “don't expect, Tonička, the journey will be like Vltava“. “Grandfather, I shall sleep all the time, and when I get up, I shall be there” she answered. She did not suspect death would find her while sleeping. As the surviving uncle Vevera reported to the parents, Antonie was provided, as he also was, with a life belt but was separated because women and children in accordance with an order from the captain hurried to the other end of the ship. Vevera could only hardly resist to the onslaught of women and children. The grief of the parents is enormous and many people from this region have abandoned the intention to move to America.

About three hundred people drowned from “Elbe“.

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