Cuming County 1864
1865 saw the arrival of Mrs. Teresa Grewe (then Miss Teresa Klojda,) Mrs. Carl Brockman formally Miss Mary Klojda and Mrs. Labrech Schlect (formally Miss Armada Liskovic) and their families. Therefore, the first four Czech settlers in Cuming County were women. Mrs. Drew is living at date of writing, hale and hearty in the home for old people in West Point where she was interviewed by Mr. Joseph Zajicek, a pioneer and banker of that town, who has furnished the data for the history of this County. She was born in Budejovice, Bohemia in 1844 and with her parents two sisters and two brothers emigrated to Wisconsin, to Manitowoc County in 1852. On May 1st, 1865 she and her sister Mrs. Carl Brockman and Mrs. Labrech Schlect with families left Wisconsin for Nebraska with three ox teams. Miss Klojda, then a young woman of 21, drove the cattle they took along and walked the whole distance from Wisconsin to Cuming County, their destination. They arrived they are about June 30th, at which time West Point consisted of three houses. One was occupied by John D Neligh, one by David Neligh and one was vacant. The following month Miss Klojda married Mr. Grewe and they settled on the homestead 6 miles Southwest of West Point, where she lived until recently. In 1868 Frank Klojda, born in Budejovice, Bohemia, came to Wisconsin in 1852. This pioneer was recognized and truly so as the most prominent Czech of his day in the county. He was known as Cloudy (an Americanized version of his name) and for years a post office named in his honor existed in the county. He was a man of worldly experience, having traveled much since landing in America and speaking English, German and Czech fluently. He was of a fine appearance, refined manners and left the memory of a kindly, charitable and unsparing worker among poor pioneers. He was postmaster of Cloudy for many years and was the first Czech to be elected to the county office, that of assessor, in 1869. In 1875 he moved to Seattle Washington.
Mrs. Mary Brockman, now lives in California but the rest of that little company who came with her are no more. The first colonies settling Cuming County consisted of a group of Germans, who came from Dubuque, Iowa in the spring of 1860. From that year1865, when Mrs. Grewe came, the colony had not received a single additional inhabitant. After that it began to grow and in 1870 was a population of some 200.
This is an excerpt from a NeGenWeb Project