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A thing that comes with age is increased interest in those who came before. I wish I had asked my parents so many more questions about their lives.
Our daughter Abby spent time doing ancestry work on both Pam's and my side. Others have worked on the Krzmarzicks. Everyone's work can build on others' on websites like ancestry.com.
Amazingly, we can go back to the 1500s with some lines that led to Abby. Of course, the further back you go, we only know names and where they lived.
Earlier this summer, I got to visit a place that is important in my family story. We spent two weeks in east Europe with family. More about that another time. Now I want to write about one hour of that trip.
Some background. On July 1, 1864, the ship Bavaria landed at Castle Garden, a port in New York City. It had departed from Hamburg, Germany. Passengers were numbered and recorded as they debarked the ship. Numbers 377 to 383 were "Joh. and Barb. Kerzmark" and their five children.
Somehow "Kerzmark" became Krzmarzick. Everyone with that name descends from Johann and Barbara. They are my great great grandparents. Their son on board with them, 15-year-old George is my great grandfather.
It wasn't until 1976 when families did histories for Sleepy Eye St. Mary's centennial book, that I came to know about them. Since then, I have thought often about their lives before and after crossing the ocean. We know a little. There's a lot more we don't know.
We know that on the Bavaria, my family was in "steerage." That was the cheapest place for passengers. Somewhere in the bowels of the ship, it had to have been unpleasant. With our modern notions of sanitation and nutrition, none of those mattered with hundreds of migrants in the middle of the nineteenth century.
From New York, the little clan went first to Wisconsin. The family spent enough time in Wisconsin to have another child.
In 1866, they moved to Brown County, Stark Township. This was after the U.S. Dakota War of 1862 when large amounts of land were opening. In 1866 there was a New Ulm, not yet a Sleepy Eye. Large numbers of Bohemians were coming here, part of a huge wave of German immigrants.
Many of those who came to Brown County almost for sure knew each other in Europe, a type of chain migration. I have Krals, Soukups, Haalas, Kottens, Domeiers, and Stuebers in my family tree. All of them came from a region about 50 miles wide.
As was common, the Krzmarzicks first dwelling was a sod house. Theirs' was built into a cave on the bank of the Cottonwood River. They lived there before a home could be built upland. Often a barn was built first. Pioneer families needed to make a living before they needed a living room.
I try to imagine Barbara taking care of six children in a place she'd never been. With a dirt floor and dirt walls and eating what they could procure from the prairie and woods. I try to imagine it but really can't.
Somehow Johann and his growing boys built a farm where there had been prairie. A trip to New Ulm eight miles to the east for supplies would have been a large undertaking.
In June, I was able to fill a piece of the unknown. Family researchers knew that Johann and Barbara left house number 64 in Desenice to go to Hamburg. That was part of the province of Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic.
We spent several days with Wade Olsen touring villages in that region where my ancestors lived for centuries. Wade has given tours to ancestry seekers for a couple of decades. Many are members of the German Bohemian Society.
House number 64 is in the village of Kuntzer on the outskirts of Desenice. Using old maps that Wade located, we were able to walk around the site where Johann and Barbara left 162 years ago.
No one has lived there for a while. It's part of a hilltop where one looks down on small fields between wooded areas. We know that Johann had the right to farm some of those fields. The royal family owned the land. Our peasant farmer ancestors only had permission to lease. The opportunity to own land was a draw to America.
What remained of house number 64 was at the end of a dirt path. No one has lived here for a long time. Old growth trees shade most of it. Grass grows across the slight hilltop.
There is a remnant of a small stone building still standing, a type of barn. Foundations of what was probably the house are near there. Hidden in the ground is a hole, with some stones making what was a wall. Maybe it was a cellar or well.
Our 10-year-old grandson ran around looking for discoveries. Here was the home of his great, great, great, great grandparents. To be with him there was a gift.
All of us have stories like Johann and Barbara's in our past. Unless you are native or the descendants of slaves, your ancestors were immigrants deciding to go into the unknown in the hope of a better life. It is the American story.
I thought of what our country has become today. The way immigrants are being captured, detained, locked up, deported literally in chains. The American story is being eviscerated.
A cascade of lies props this up. Very few have a criminal record. Many of the victims are here legally seeking asylum or refugee status. Laws are changed to affect their capture. Congress has forfeited lawmaking to Stephen Miller. This is unconstitutional. That is not to mention immoral.
When waves of Germans were coming to our shores, there was strong anti-German sentiment. It's possible to imagine with a twist of time and history that Johann and Barbara could have been separated from their children and sent to a detention center.
-- Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.