JOHN AND MARIE [MASAT] SEDIVY
John Sedivy was born in 1825 and Marie (Masat) in 1827 in Senesnice,
Bohemia. They were married in 1847. About 1862 the family emigrated
to Canada and located in Quebec. Two years later they moved to
Chicago. John was a professional tailor and made men’s suits. After
living in Chicago for about four years, they traveled by rail to
Sioux City, Iowa. There they purchased a team of oxen and traveled
across the prairie to Niobrara, Nebraska, where they lived for a
short time. They took up a homestead at Pischelville in Knox County
in about 1871 and there they reared their family of three boys and
three girls who lived at the respective places: Joseph, Lynch;
Frank, Lynch; Annie (Bush), Lynch; Mary (Sukup), Verdigre; Frances (Soucek),
Verdel; and John V., Pischelville.
[pg 391 photo John and Marie Sedivy]
During their life on the prairie, they had many exciting
experiences. While they were living in Niobrara, their home was
destroyed by a prairie fire. One of their boys, Frank, was badly
burned and scarred for life. On the homestead at Pischelville, there
were narrow escapes of being scalped by Indians, the Poncas and the
Sioux. Soldiers were stationed in the vicinity as protection to the
settlers. One night the Indians took their milk cow and butchered
her. They also took many of their food supplies. John would walk to
Niobrara for supplies and one night he was late getting home. His
oldest son, Joseph, went to meet him and was captured by a band of
Indians who threatened to scalp him if he did not tell where the
soldiers were staying, but the boy finally convinced the Indians in
both their language and English that he did not know, and they freed
him unharmed. On one of his other journeys from Niobrara with
supplies in mid-winter, the wolves started to close in on John, and
he took a stick, hit the frozen ice on the river, and it cracked
like a gunshot, and the wolves ran away.
In 1873 the pioneers had a very severe Easter blizzard. In 1874
there was a severe grasshopper invasion and the grasshoppers ate
everything in sight, nothing left. Much of the livelihood those days
consisted of hunting and fishing.
John Sedivy died in 1895 at age 70, and Marie Sedivy died in 1915 at
the age of 88. They are both buried in the family plot at the
Pischelville Cemetery.
Sumitted by Mrrs. L. H. Foxworthy
Pages
390, 391
