"Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery." - Amy Chua

The First Arrival in America

I was surprised to find out that when John Lutovsky emigrated to the US in 1891 that he wasn't the first to arrive here. The woman who was soon (and I do literally mean soon, which I will explain below) to become his wife, Katerina Broz (which is actually Brozova, but I will explain that in another post), was actually the first ancestor to arrive to the new country. Katerina, who Americanized the spelling of her name as well to Katherine or Catherine. The spelling changes often between being spelled with a "K" or a "C," with a few Katherina's thrown in as well as Kate and Katie...and on a side note, the fluidity of names is another topic I will be covering, because for me, who is trying to piece together the past, the changing of names as often as the wind changes direction, seems to have been very common back then...but more on that later.

Katherine Lutovsky 1868 - 1930

Katherine arrived in the US in 1888, and unfortunately, she also arrived at the port of Baltimore. For her, I was able to locate the ship's manifest for her travel to the US, but again, unfortunately the records from Baltimore are pitiful compared to Ellis Island.

It says on the manifest that her final destination was Illinois, but that's it. It doesn't say who she was on her way to see and to which city. The records of Ellis Island do give the name and address of where the people are headed to.

It looks like she may have been traveling with two other people, Franz Cerny and Peza Melifich although, this is not conclusive, but the way the ship's manifest has them grouped together looks like they were travelling together. And all three of them were headed to Illinois. I have found a Broz family, also originally from Bohemia, living in Chicago at this time, so maybe that's who she was on her way to see? But I haven't found a connection yet, so that is still to be discovered.

Katherine is listed as being 21 years old, which was incorrect. She was actually only 20, and she is listed as a servant, which makes total sense since both her father and grandfather worked as servants. And the most odd thing was that she wasn't traveling with any luggage. It seems unfathomable today that anyone would be traveling to the other side of the world without luggage, but if you had nothing to bring with you, you had no need for luggage.

The voyage from Europe to the US across the Atlantic normally took slightly under 2 weeks. Katherine arrived here in 1888, and by that time most all of the ships making the Atlantic crossing had been replaced with steamships which cut the at sea time down from about 5 to 6 weeks, to around 2 weeks.

Her ship's manifest also doesn't state which port in Europe that she left from. It makes the most sense that she left from either Bremen or Hamburg Germany. Those two would have been the closest. Although, I have read where southern Bohemians, as in Katherine's case, frequently left from Le Havre, France even though it seems quite a ways away. The river system throughout Eastern and Western Europe was the easiest way to travel some of the time, depending on the points of departure and arrival. Going to La Havre may have been a bit farther, but it could have been a bit easier to get to due to the rivers. There must have been some motivation for the Southern Bohemians to make that journey.

The Wedding

I mentioned above that Katherine here would soon become John's wife...and I wasn't kidding. John emigrated to the US in May of 1891. Six months later, on November 23rd 1891, John and Katherine were married. I have been very curious to find out if the two of them knew each other from the old country, or if they had really just met for the first time in Vesseleyville, North Dakota, where they married 6 month after John's US arrival, had 15 kids and worked their farm?

I'm keeping my eyes open to see if anything comes up that may explain this a bit more, but it is possible that they knew each other prior to coming to the US. Their villages were only 8.8 km (about 5.4 miles) apart.

I was wondering if they "had" to get married, but after looking at the dates and facts, I would say no. There was nothing that would have made them have a rushed wedding. They were married as I stated, on November 23rd 1891. Almost exactly 9 months to the day later...except two days short...on August 21st 1892 their first child Mary was born. Isn't that good timing? Mary was born 2 days short of exactly 9 months from the wedding night. So, nothing fishy there! And this does make total sense as well, since the people of Bohemia in general, were very devout Catholics.