MATEJ AND MARIE [POKORNY] HOLAN
Late in November of 1878 Matej Holan, Jr., was married. His wife was
a Krupicka and though she had been orphaned early in life and had
grown up and worked very hard for little money in the Holans’
hometown of Velky Osek, the hometown of the Krupickas,
Libice-on-the-Cidlina, Podebrady, was where the marriage took place,
in church. The Holans, according to a family obituary, were
officially protestants. If so, they were very unusual in the Bohemia
of that day.
Perhaps the very next day they traveled to a seaport and embarked
for the United States. Once there they journeyed straight to the
Niobrara area of Knox County. There was a reason: Mrs. Holan was a
cousin, in some degree, of Joseph Krupicka and his children who had
come here in the fall of 1869. They were doubtless the relatives who
helped him build a log cabin in December.
The next spring his parents and sisters came to join them. Matej
Holan, Sr., was then perhaps 61, as nearly as can be guessed from
the census of 1880 and 1885; he was born about 1817. His wife Marie,
nee Pokorny, was born about 1829. They settled and homesteaded in
Sparta Township on the S ½ of the Northeast Quarter and the North
Half of the Southeast Quarter in Section 3. In order to qualify as a
homesteader, Matej, Sr., had to become an American citizen and on
June 17 or 18, 1885, he did so. By that act he naturalized his wife
and daughters, all minors.
There were four known children.
Matej, Jr., the eldest, was born February 25, 1856. He and his wife
homesteaded the South Half of the Southeast Quarter of Section 34 in
Niobrara Township and the North Half of the Northeast Quarter of
Section 3 in Sparta Township, and on April 8, 1884, he was
naturalized. Matej Holan, Jr., and his wife had six children,
Joseph, Mary (Mrs. John F. Vakoc), Bessie (Mrs. Steven Kreycik),
Emma (Mrs. George Wirth), Rose (Mrs. Charles Melena), and Agnes
(Mrs. Max Marshall).
Anna, who was born December 18, 1862, and died October 16, 1918,
married Anton Tichy the year after they arrived.
Marie, born in 1865, married Vaclav Uhlir. She died July 4, 1907.
Betty (Alsbeta) was born November 20, 1871. On April 1, 1889, she
married Emil Kacer. Their children were Mollie, Mrs. Richard Tichy,
and Edward. She died August 9, 1956.
On January 22, 1887, Matej Holan, Sr., obtained a patent on his
homestead and on the same day he sold that land to Vaclav Uhlir, who
was marrying his daughter that day. Then on August 3, 1887, he
purchased the homestead of his son, the North Half of the Northeast
Quarter of Section 3 in Sparta Township and the South Half of the
Southeast Quarter of Section 34 in Niobrara Township.
On August 2, 1889, Matej Holan, Sr., sold the 80 acres in Sparta
Township to John Pierce. The other 80 acres came into the possession
of members of the family, though a 40-acre patch was not recorded as
a transfer so that a probate of Matej Holan, Sr’s, estate was
necessary to establish ownership in 1926 after the death of Matej
Holan, Jr. (on November 9, 1924).
Matej Holan, Sr., died January 18, 1891, according to this document,
and his wife, Marie Pokorny Holan, died on December 15, 1896. They
were buried in unmarked graves in the L’Eau Qui Court Cemetery at
Niobrara in a lot in which their daughter Marie and her husband,
Vaclav Uhlir, eventually came to lie, along with several children of
the latter couple who died in infancy.
--Written by Ron Dobry
Page 269
