JOHN AND ANTONIA [HVEZDA] DIVIS
According to his tombstone, John (Jan) Divis was born in the Tabor
District of Bohemia on March 2, 1845, to John Davis, Sr., and Kate
Brichovoski (or Brichovsky). Kate died in Srcany, Tabor, in 1856,
shortly after the birth of her second son, Joseph. In 1864, John,
Jr., married Antonia (Hvzda, Hveizdova). They took Joseph into their
household at this time because of the death of their father, John
Divis, Sr.
In 1873 they started to America aboard the “Columbus” out of the
port of Hamburg but were forced to turn back and spend several
months interned, probably under quarantine. Then they resumed their
journey to the United States, landing in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Divises went on to Chicago. Joseph, John’s brother, remained in
that city, working at various jobs. John and Antonia and their
daughter Antonia went on to Iowa. They seem to have been first at
Jackson Junction, Iowa, but they farmed for seven years at
Pocahontas, Iowa, where there were other Czech families. Here their
other children were born: Frank, Joseph A. and Anna. (The date of
Frank’s birth -- and therefore his birthplace - is in dispute.) In
1877 Joseph came to join them. Antonia’s mother, Barbara Hveizdova,
was probably also with them for she died at Verdigre and is buried
in the St. Wenceslaus Cemetery.
In 1880 in the company of other Czech families, the Divises migrated
to the Verdigre area, where John took up a homestead, as did Joseph.
(A relative named John Divis accompanied them but he was 69 by then
and probably too old to homestead.)
The four children of John and Antonia Divis were Antonia, born in
Bohemia in 1865, and the wife of Thomas Stoural, Sr.; Frank A. born
supposedly at Pocahontas, Iowa, on April 19, 1874, and died July 31,
1953; Joseph A. drowned in Montana on April 20, 1920, at the age of
42, and Anna, born in 1880, died after being struck by an automobile
in Chicago in 1950.
Joseph died a single man. Frank was married in the early nineties to
a woman named Ethel. Two of their four children survived infancy.
Edward, the younger, died at Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, at ten
years, while Frank, Jr., the elder, almost always called Harry, died
in a gun-trap accident in Montana in 1915. Frank Divis operated a
drugstore in the nineties in partnership with someone and then was
partner with Clark Parkhurst in a saloon around the turn of the
century. About 1901 he went to Omaha where he was first a member at
the police force and then the proprietor of a bar. His first wife
seems to have died 1902-1905. About 1915 he married Marie
Grapengiser and went to Montana. Anna was first married to a man
named Harris and then to Thomas Murphy.
John Divis died on September 21, 1905. His wife Antonia died April
8, 1929.
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