Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/109

 despite the fact that business and the professions each year win more adherents among them.

The first Bohemian who came to Nebraska, so far as can be learned, was Libor Alois Šlesinger, who was born October 28, 1806, in Ústí above the Orlice River in Bohemia. It is noteworthy that this first Bohemian immigrant to this state came to America to seek political liberty which in his own country was downed by absolutism prevailing in Austria after the unsuccessful revolution of 1848. Šlesinger left Bohemia in November, 1856, and in January of the following year arrived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which city was a sort of stopping place for most of the Bohemian immigrants en route for the great, attractive, booming West beyond the Missouri. The trip from Cedar Rapids to Omaha Šlesinger made by wagon, a little later settling near the Winnebago Reservation. His experiences were as picturesque and adventurous, if not more so, than those of other early comers.

Joseph Horský, who arrived in 1857 and also came by the Cedar Rapids route, was the second, and the now famous Edward Rosewater, who founded the Omaha Bee, was the third Czech to settle in the Cornhusker State.

The homestead laws, which went in effect in 1863, attracted to the West hundreds of Bohemians who had already become citizens or were about to swear allegiance to the starry flag. Saline County was the first to draw settlers of the Bohemian nationality, most of the first comers emigrating from the neighborhood of Manitowoc and Kewaunee, Wisconsin. Counties which were settled very soon after the coming of the Czechs to Saline County were Butler, Colfax and Knox counties. The settlement of Knox county by Bohemians was arranged in Chicago and Cleveland in 1868, when 800 families joined a prearranged scheme and moved from these two cities en masse to the shores of the Niobrara and Missouri. The following communities gave themselves Bohemian names: Prague and Praha in Saunders county, named after the capital city of Bohemia, Shestak in Saline county, Jelen in Knox county and Tabor in Colfax county.

After the first wave of Bohemian immigration to Nebraska, which consisted of men seeking political and religious freedom, other waves came, representing men who were escaping enforced military service in the Austrian army or seeking economical betterment. Despite the fact that large numbers came in 1865 and 1866 to avoid serving in the army, nevertheless, when the call came for volunteers to help preserve the Union these same Bohemians, fleeing enforced militarism, of their own will enlisted with Lincoln’s troops. This was true of Bohemians in Cleveland, Chicago, Cedar Rapids and other large centers of that nationality. The Czechs carried off many scars from the Civil War and you will find them in the G. A. R. rolls of honor in loyal percentages just as in the Spanish-American war, when whole companies of Bohemian volunteers left Nebraska for the Philippines and Cuba. One can well say with Walt Whitman:

From the domain of Roman Catholic Austria to unpledged Nebraska is a step of many thousands of miles. The difference in the religious attitude of many Czechs who have taken that long step is as great and is likewise analogous.

The Bohemians of the state may be roughly classified into three general groups—Roman Catholics, Protestants and Liberal Thinkers. There are forty-four towns and villages in Nebraska in which Bohemian Catholic churches and priests are located. Parochial schools are maintained in connection with some of the churches as, for instance, the building in Dodge where 140 children attend the instruction of Sisters of Our Lady.

There are some twenty Bohemian Protestant churches in the state, being mainly Methodist and Presbyterian.

The Liberal Thinkers are more recently organized, there being but five societies in Nebraska.

The Bohemian people in the United States are unusually strong on organization. Judging alone by Nebraska’s Bohemian lodge membership one might easily believe that they were inveterate “joiners”. It is a well-known fact that as members of labor unions they are “stickers” and believe thoroughly in the adhesive value of organization to gain a point. It is, however, as organizers of social and fraternal protective societies that the Bohemians excel. Practically every man of Bohemian birth or parentage belongs to one or more associa-