A girl from Lipov
Agnes begins her memoir in Lipov, “the little village in southern Bohemia where I was born and raised.” She remembers her first day of school at about five or six years old: a new apron, a patent-leather school bag, a slate and pencil.
Her father left for America when she was about four months old, “working and saving money so he could send for Mother and me to join him.” She writes that Mother saw Father again for the first time in about six years, and that she herself did not remember him.
She grew up among a large family circle in the old country. Her mother’s mother was Mary Stach, known as “Grandma Doctor,” a woman Agnes remembered as very wise with plants and remedies. An uncle, Martin, was mayor of Lipov and kept a rose garden and bees. Agnes had a sister Mary, whose wedding is listed in the memoir, and a sister Katherine (the book also spells it Catherine), who was already in America with Father.
The journey to America
When the letter from the travel agent finally came, “all the relatives came to our home to kiss us good-bye.” Grandma brought a loaf of rye bread in a new linen cloth, packed in the bottom of their big basket. Agnes and her mother took a three-hour train to Veseliou Morava — “the first city I ever saw.” The memoir’s table of contents also lists a train to Prague.
They traveled on through Germany, where she remembered soldiers in uniforms smiling and waving, and stayed eight days in a hotel in Amsterdam. Mother bought her a big bunch of violets at a market where four streets joined. From there they boarded the ship. On the last morning they rushed on deck and “finally we got to see the Statue of Liberty. It was beautiful, shining in the sun.”
It took hours to unload in New York. An agent who spoke Bohemian helped them. Mother bought train tickets to Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Agnes writes that this was the first week of November, and that there was no snow as they traveled. After a long ride and a mix-up over the address — her brother-in-law had written Haugen instead of the right place — they were met at the station. “Finally one agent said, ‘Mike Sedlak’ — that was my sister’s husband’s name — and we were found.”
A new life in Wisconsin
Sister Katherine welcomed them. After a night’s rest, Agnes met the children. Her nephew Johnny “could talk English some and he took me to school after only two days.” Her first lesson was to say “Good morning, Teacher.” Within a few days she could sing “Silent Night,” though she did not yet know what the words meant.
The family settled near Brill and Rice Lake. They sold cream to the Brill creamery. Father logged in the winters of 1915 and 1916, coming home for Christmas each year. Agnes writes of oxen and pigs, frozen feet in thin stockings, a neighbor’s gift of warm socks, and “the first and only Christmas tree I had when I lived at home.”
In the memoir’s table of contents she later records a young man visiting, the families meeting, “some difficulties with Father,” and then “I marry, wedding dinner and dance, learning to cook, baking bread and kolacky.” The body of the memoir we have does not tell that wedding story in full, and it does not name her husband there.
The cabin, the tapes, and later years
On the cassette tapes, recorded when she was an older woman, Agnes talks about building a log cabin among the wild roses near home. She says, “So John, my husband, decide, well, let’s go,” and later that the cabin was one “my husband made for me.” She was a gardener and a painter of flower pots, a teller of farm stories, and a traveler — including a long bus ride from Rice Lake, through Eau Claire and Madison, to Chicago to see her sister.
She recalls that when she was 65, her grandchildren and daughters-in-law gathered for an open house at the cabin, and 180 people came. One of the tapes is dated May 25, 1986, on Decoration Day weekend. By then she was taking flowers to the cemetery for her husband, so he had already died. On a Christmas tape made with Rose, Todd, and Kirby, one of the children says, “Great grandma’s here.”
English was her second language. You can hear that on the tapes, and you can see it in the memoir, which she wrote, as she says, for her grandchildren, “with little schooling and no practice in writing.”
Her book
The memoir is titled Early Memories — in full, Early Memories of Bohemia: A Memoir, From Bohemia to America Near the Turn of the Century, “Written for my grandchildren.” Looking back at things the family carried from the old country, she writes of “those sixty years since we are here.” She also writes that Grandma passed away in 1923, “so Grandma lived nine more years after Mother and I left Bohemia.”