JOSEPH AND VINCENZA [JISKRA-KACER] WIRTH
According to his obituary, Joseph Virt was a native of Rencl,
Prestice, Plzen, Bohemia. Just when Joseph Wirth, Sr., born April or
May 10, 1844, arrived in L’Eau Qui Court County is uncertain. His
obituary gives the names of his parents as Jan and Anna Wirth. There
is recorded on pages 264 and 265 of Book A of the land records a
purchase by Joseph Wirth of eight lots in Central Niobrara from
James H. Hamilton and wife o May 30, 1871. On December 1, 1871, he
sold these lots to Vac Randa (pp. 306-307). On July 1, 1872, he
bought back the lots from Vac Randa for whom he worked when he came
to the county.
[pg 467 photo Joseph and Vincenza Jiskra Wirth]
By this time he was certainly in the future Western Township where
his original homestead was the East Half of the Northeast Quarter of
Section 27, Township 32, Range 8 West, which he received by patent
on March 4, 1882. He was naturalized April 21, 1880.
On August 28, 1872, when his warranty deed from Vac Randa was filed,
Joseph Wirth married Vincenza Jiskra. Judge Thomas Paxton officiated
in the Jan Sedivy home with Vac Randa and Ole Knutson as witnesses.
It was license number ten issued in the county.
One early story told of him was that every week he would go on foot
to Niobrara to get the mail for the nascent Pischelville community.
For this he was paid a small sum by the other settlers. This job did
not last long before a mail route and a post office were established
out there.
Vinceslava or Vincenza was born October 15, 1853. Recent research
shows that she was probably the daughter of a certain Jiskra of
Mestecko, Krivoklat, and Mary Sladek. After the death of Jiskra,
Mary was wed to Frank Kacer, by whom she had at least two children.
One of them, Emil Kacer, settled in the area, and a second, Fred,
lived here for a time in the nineties. Mary Sladek Jiskra Kacer’s
sister, Mrs. Frank Vonasek, also settled here. Joseph Jiskra, her
brother, homesteaded in Section 5 of Western Township, probably
about 1884.
According to Stoney Butte Homemakers, the first teacher in the
Knoxville School was named Jiskra, sex unstated. How Vinceslava
found her way to L’Eau Qui Court County is unknown.
Joseph Wirth and Vinceslava Kacer Jiskra had nine known children:
Christina, Julia, August, Fannie, George, Joseph F., Ernest,
Blanche, and Martha.
Christina, born October 25, 1873, and died July 3, 1968, married
Frank Hrbek on November 13, 1894. Their children were Rose, Georgia,
Fred, Clara, Dora, Emil, Helen, Arthur, Otto, and Tillie.
Julia, born December 17, 1871, according to family records, was
married twice, first to Anton A. Smrcka, who died July 11, 1916, and
then to Frank Oliverius. She had children by Smrcka.
August, born July 3, 1877, married Anna Dobrichovsky on May 8, 1899.
Their children were Bertha, Edward, Mary, and August, Jr. August
Wirth, Sr., died in an accident January 9, 1906, and his widow then
married Joseph Farnik, Sr., by whom she had other children.
Fannie, according to her obituary, was born October 11, 1885, but he
census of 1885 lists her as then being six years old. On February
14, 1897, she married George Vonasek. The children who lived were
Edward, Frank, and Tillie. Fannie died March 20, 1971.
George was born March 22, 1880, and died July 23, 1950. On February
18, 1904, he married Emma Holan. The couple had four daughters:
Mildred, Evelyn, Elsie, and Josephine.
Joseph F. was born March 19, 1883, and died May 29, 1944. On
November 26, 1907, he married Anna Hercik. Their children were Otto,
Marie, May, Rose, Ernest and Frank
Ernest was born about 1885 and died September 14, 1964. On September
30, 1908, he married Mabel Fosterman. They had a son named Larry.
Blanche, born November 22, 1889, first married a man named John
Snyder (after 1908 but before 1911), and then Thomas Cooper. The
Coopers lived in the O’Neill area where she died more than ten years
ago.
Martha, born March 10, 1894 and died February 2, 1919, married
Longing Holopirik on December 30, 1912. There were two sons.
Early in 1892 Joseph Wirth, according to the Hospodar (the name
occurs there in its Bohemian spelling, Virt, but the name is
distinctively German) owned 560 acres. By 1903 his holdings amounted
to 720 acres with land in Sections 21, 22, 26, and 27.
Joseph Wirth was coming to be thought of as an old settler, one of
those who had lived through all of the pioneer experiences of toe seventies and eighties and the drought and
depression of the nineties. When the Knox County Old Settlers
Association was formed in 1901, he was made an area captain.
In later years the couple retired to Niobrara (not the village in
which he had bought lots in 1871 and 1872, but the Niobrara
established after the flood of 1871). They lived there, one feels,
in growing seclusion. After an illness, Mrs. Wirth died on June 18,
1918. Joseph Wirth spent his last months with his daughter,
Christena (Frank) Hrbek, dying on December 10, 1924.
Pages 466, 467
