FROM DAYS GONE BY-By Alfred Novacek

Taken from Amerikan Almanac of year 1914

Joseph Ledvina.
I was born February 13, 1853 in the town of Karlik, Prague District. I attended school up to age 12 at the local school. His father was a small farmer. With his brother, and both families in the year 1865 they set sail for America. His brother was from the town of Rovin near Revnic. They left from Bremen with the steamship company Kares and Stotzky on the ship Emilii 6666. It took 42 days before they set anchor in New York. From there they went by train to Chicago.

His father then learned the trade of cooper (box maker) as his brothers and sisters knew the trade also. The pay was $2.25 per day. It was shortly after the Civil War and prices of products were high. A barrel of flour cost $20.

Young Joseph was only 13 years old and he found employment in a tobacco factory for $.50 a day. Then a year later he went to work in a planning mill for $ l .00 a day. His foreman was a well known Czech in the Chicago area by the name of J. Kalal. Joseph’s mother washed floors, washed clothes and did odd jobs for a wealthy Jewish family for $4.00 a week.

Then the family moved to LaGrand, Iowa, where his father worked in a brick factory. He did not care for the job so moved to Tama, County in Chelas, Iowa where he rented 40 acres for a sum of $90. Joseph was the eldest of the six children. He assisted his father until the age of 25, when he married Antonia Cerny. His father then purchased 200 more acres and gave Joseph 80 acres with a $600 debt. His start in farming was bitter. He purchased 80 bushels of wheat for seed and sowed 40 acres. His crop was 240 bushels, which he sold for $.35 a bushel. That is the way it went for four years. He then sold his farm for $1200 and moved to Saline County,Nebraska, where he purchased from the railroad for $10 an acre, 80 acres and whetted his appetite for farming. He built a home. In the fourth year hail wiped out his entire crop, but he had 120 head of hogs, which he fed 80 of them and sold them and raised some more then cholera set in and he lost 90 hogs.

So that was his way of life. He then sold his farm in Saline County for $1,700 and moved to Cheyne County, Nebraska as new settlements were opening up for settlers and many Czechs moved the re. But in his eight-year stay there, he had only a crop or two out of the eight years on his 160 acres. Years 1893 and 1894 were the worst as it did not rain at all and 75 head of his cattle perished. He then shipped the rest of his cattle to the stockyards and realized $475. He then packed up and headed went to Oregon, which was in the year 1894.

He was six months without any work. Then he found work in the logging industry for seven years at $1.50 a day. In 1905 a big fair opened in Portland and he found employment with the fair for $2.00 a day. After 14 years of hard work, he saved up and purchased 28 acres nine miles out of Portland where this time of writing price for land has went from $300 to $1,000 an acre.
Together with his wife, they had four children, their youngest daughter died and two other daughters are married. His son is single. He owns four blocks in the city proper and constructed himself a seven-room house for $5,000 and also owns three farms in California. Joseph is now residing in the new land of America 42 years and is perfectly contented and is well off.