JOSEPH AND ANNA [MLADY] KALAL
[pg 295 PHOTO Mrs. Joe Kalal]
Joseph Kalal was born in Podbori, Bohemia, on July 13, 1852. He came
to America at 17, about 1869, and did various kinds of work. In 1871
he married Anna Mlady. The Kalals took up a homestead in 1873 about
¾ mile northwest of Verdigre.
Anna Kalal was born in Malsice, Bohemia, on August 19, 1855. In 1870
she emigrated, taking up residence in Chicago where she worked for a
year before marrying Joseph Kalal.
The couple had three children: Frank, born in Chicago in 1873 and
became a doctor, he died March 2, 1938; Mary (November 29,
1874-October 9, 1911) married Willard Kingsley Clark, who later
became a doctor; and Charles (December 11, 1885-January 29, 1889).
In an account written in the 1920s, Mrs. Kalal described how she and
her husband, her husband’s parents and brothers, his sister and
brother-in-law (the Vaclav Jedlickas) and John Vakoc arrived here in
the fall of 1873 and how, too impatient to ride from Niobrara by
wagon to the future site of Verdigre, she had walked twelve miles
with her nine-month-old son on her back. She was a Mlady and that is
doubtless why the Kalals came here in the first place.
In 1887 or 1888 Joseph Kalal and his wife moved into Verdigre. The
first building he put up was a butcher shop on the site of Sonder’s
Sundries. In 1888 or 1889 he tore down that building and put up the
first City Hotel. It burned late in 1892 and he then built a second
hotel with a butcher shop on the ground floor. The Kalals operated
this hotel until 1900. In 1907 it burned.
Joseph Kalal died May 26, 1926, in retirement.
Mrs. Kalal, according to her obituary, “was a person of strong
personality and during her long residence here made and kept a wide
circle of friends. During the world war, she was very active in Red
Cross work and was president of the local organization of that
society.” She died June 23, 1932, and was buried beside her husband
in the parish cemetery at Verdigre.
Pages
295, 296
