"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark" - Warsan Shire

Arrival in America.

One of the first things I wanted to discover is exactly when did the first Lutovsky ancestor(s) arrive in the US? This actually took a bit of time because the first arrivals unfortunately didn't come through Ellis Island. The record keeping there was amazing, and records are easily accessible on-line, but there were other ports from which immigrants could enter the country. Baltimore was an alternative to Ellis Island, which is a bit of a mess paperwork wise, and unfortunately, that's where our ancestors arrived. It doesn't appear that Baltimore was that organized at record keeping...or, if there even were records created, so I have never been able to locate any of the arrival paperwork.

John Lutovsky 1863 - 1959

However, even without those documents I was able to find other documents which answer the question...when did they arrive? Below is the Declaration of Intent to become a US citizen from 1894, of the patriarch of the Lutovsky clan, Jan (pronounced "Yawn") Lutovsky. Upon his arrival in May of 1891, his name was quickly Americanized to the English spelling of John. I have several documents of his and every one of them list his name as John. It doesn't look like he ever used the spelling of Jan once he arrived in the US. There is a good chance that his name became John as he entered immigration, which was extremely common back then. So, I thought mystery solved, first Lutovsky arrived here in 1891...but that only lasted until I found the information on his wife who beat him to the US by 3 years...All about her in the next post.

On a side note...I was totally surprised to see that John Lutovsky was educated enough to sign his name, but there is his signature above. Back in the 1800s most countries had not mandated education yet, however Bohemia (which later became Czechoslovakia in 1918, then later became Czech Republic in 1990, which then became Czechia (for us English speakers) in April 2016) was one of the first European countries to make education compulsory. An act was issued in 1774 which made schooling mandatory for children between 6 and 12 years of age...and how's this for progressive...even for the girls!

Schools were established in all villages that had a parish and "Trivium" had to be taught. "Trivium" is a medieval word referring to the study of grammar, rhetoric and logic, or as we call them today...reading, writing and math. When I was researching the history of schools, I found this painting by a Swiss painter, which was painted in 1896, and his subject was a grade school in 1848. But apparently this is a really good representation of what grade schools really looked like back then. They were notorious for being very crowded.

Many farm families would have a hard time if all of their farm laborers...aka their children...were in school, so not all children would go to school. I have also read where in the spring and fall...planting and harvest seasons...the schools would be pretty empty since the parents needed their farm laborers to help on the farm.

And here's the thing I found most interesting...the parents were burdened with paying the teachers, but they could pay the teacher in pastry, specifically kolache. Now, coming from a person who is a total pastry-a-holic (the forbidden food because I'd weight 600 lbs if I really ate all the pastry that I would like), I'm thinking WOW! If I lived back then I would have absolutely become a teacher. I'd be totally fine being paid in pastry. Yes, I'd weight 600 lbs, but dentistry didn't exist yet, so I wouldn't have any teeth either, so who the hell would care that I weighed 600 lbs? Bring on the pastry payments. Although, parents would also pay with eggs, fruit, vegetables, nuts, milk and anything else that they would grow or raise on their farms. The serious problem with this was it made life difficult for the teachers who wouldn't really get any money. They would get an assortment of food, but that was it. The good news for the teachers was in 1869 the laws changed and kids had to go to school regardless of their farm work, and it was also mandatory that they go to school for 8 years, and the teachers were then paid a salary by the government.