Holan and Vesely

The Book of the Cedar Rapids Hickman family was completed in 1999 but for our Holan branch it took over 10 more years to locate the Holan ancestral village in Bohemia of the Czech Republic. Of course we always knew that the Holans were Bohemians and that they had arrived in 1870 in New York. They settled in Tama County, Iowa near the small town of Chelsea and farmed the rich black earth until well into the 20th century.

And now with the help of a researcher we have found the village in the south central part of Bohemia. It is a tiny place named Poresin. It was never a very large town, having about 13 homes and 90 people at the time the Holans sailed over the Atlantic ocean to America. When the twenty-first century came there were still just 13 homes but then only 14 people! There is a larger town, Petrovice, just a short way down the road and both towns are about an hour's drive to Prague, the nation's capitol.

In this particular family it was always difficult to pursue our genealogy of the Holan folks since our great-grandfather Josef had a wife named Frantiska but her maiden name was not known. But now we know that Josef was not her first husband! Frantiska Benesova was born in Petrovice in 1832 and she first married one Jan Herman. They had two sons, Frantisek (Frank) and Josef, but Jan died shortly after. Now Josef Holan of Poresin married Frantiska and they had another son Vincenc, then Anna who died in infancy, and Mary who was born just before they left for America in 1869.

Now in 1870 the Holans set out to find a farm near Chelsea in Tama County, Iowa. In late 1872 another son, John, was born. Two years after that Frantiska died and father Joseph was left with Frank, Joseph, Vincenc, Mary and John. The older children obviously had to help out on the farm because they were in their teens at that time. Fortunately, Joseph found Katie Vesely to be his wife and they married in 1877 and had four children, Fanny, Joseph, Jr., Frank and Anezka. Fanny was this writer's grandmother.

Great-grandfather Joseph died in 1906 but Katie lived on to age 88 in 1933. Our great-grandmother Katie was somewhat of a mystery to us. We knew her father Josef Vesely in Bohemia was mentioned on her death certificate yet Joseph Holan and Katie had a marriage certificate that indicated Katie's last name was Polecek. There were several Polecek names that came to America around that time but Mr. Polecek may have died during the voyage or in America.

Herewith is a revised genealogy (2010) of Josef, Frantiska and Katie as we now know it: