Pages 649-653
Joseph H. Yezek, who carries on general farming in Lincoln township, Worth county, was born October 3, 1877, on the place where he yet resides, his parents being Joseph and Elizaibeth (Wise) Yezek. The father, now deceased, was for many years a prominent and representative farmer of Union township. He was born in Wespoll, Bohemia, on the 19th of March, 1827, his parents being Joseph and Kate Yezek. His boyhood days were passed in Bohemia and his education was there acquired. He learned and followed the tailoring trade and was also employed as a coachman by a wealthy family. On the 14th of November, 1853, in Bohemia, he married Miss Elizabeth Wise, a daughter of Mathias and Mary (Kames) Wise. She, too, was born in Bohemia. 'T'wo years after their marriage, or in 1855, they came to the United States, taking passage on a sailing vessel which was fourteen weeks and four days, or from November until March, in reaching American shores. The voyage was made by way of Hamburg to New York. When they were on the ocean about New Year's Day a big storm came up, which continued for two nights'and a day, breaking the large middle mast, which fell on the side of the ship, so destroying the railing on that side as to make it dangerous for passengers to walk there during the rest of the trip. One day Mr. and Mrs. Yezek walked near that side, when a big wave splashed over the ship, taking them both off their feet, but luckily they were right under a rope that held the sails and Mr. Yezek grasped the rope with one hand and held his wife with the other until they could stagger back to their feet again and reach a point of safety. Near the end of the journey the water supply became low and each person was given a pint of water a day. They had to let this settle and it was then about one-half rust. They approached New York at four o'clock in the morning and there was great joy among the passengers, who felt that they were soon to set foot on land. The ship was anchored, a physician came aboard to examine the passengers and many small boats approached the ship with fruits and numerous things to sell. Suddenly a call from the sailors on the topmast, "A storm!" The order came to roll tip the sails, for a threatening storm came up and at six o'clock the same morning it began driving the helpless ship back into the ocean. For two days and nights the storm continued before they could unroll their sails and again start for New York, whereon the captain remarked, "Here we are just where we were fourteen days ago," it requiring that time to get back to New York. The water during those two weeks was alarmingly short, a glass being given for each two persons, and this was about half rust. Towards the last the water was all gone and at the last the meals were only crackers and once a day a little bean soup. When Mr. and Mrs. Yezek left the ship they were without money. They had been expected by her parents in Chicago by Christmas time. An agent, who was a German, took them from the ship to a New York hotel. Mrs. Yezek could speak with him, so he told her to sit down and left her there. Mr. Yezek went out looking for work, that he might earn enough money to continue the journey to Chicago, leaving Mrs. Yezek and the baby in the hotel. Not knowing that they served meals and not having any money, Mrs. Yezek sat there all day and night and until the second day while Mr. Yezek still looked for work. She was only twenty years old. She started crying when a man came to her, asking her in German what was the matter. She told him she was hungry, whereon he inquired why she didn't go and eat when they rang the bell. She said she had no money. Soon afterward a girl came who talked German and took her into a basement, where a table was set. After the meal was finished, the fragments were given to Mrs. Yezek and this constituted their only food on their twelve days' journey to Chicago. They were told it was hard to find work in New York and an agent helped them to get money from a Polish family who also went to Chicago. As security, Mr. Yezek gave their trunks and borrowed twenty-four dollars for the trip. After ten days' traveling they were forty miles from Chicago and the train was snowbound for two days. All passengers being hungry, a few of the men on the train walked to a farm and brought back a milk can full of black coffee and some bread. On reaching Chicago they found that Mr. Yezek's parents had given them up for lost and thus no one was waiting for them. On the second day Mrs. Yezek saw a man smoking a big Bohemian pipe and she told Mr. Yezek, who went to speak to him and from him learned the whereabouts of Mrs. Yezek's parents. They settled for the borrowed money and their board bill with the Polish family, but their trunks were lost and never seen again. They arrived in Chicago on the 6th of April, 1856, and there resided until October, 1857, when they started across the country to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and thence to McGregor, Iowa. After crossing the Mississippi river they proceeded westward to Bristol township, Worth county, making the trip with oxen. Mr. Yezek built a log house with hay roof and began the development of his land. There they lived four years and experienced the greatest suffering of their lives. When they settled on the place they had only twenty dollars in money, of which they paid ten dollars for hauling logs that Mr. Yezek had cut down to use in building a house. He also paid five dollars for ten bushels of potatoes and five dollars for flour, which supplies were to last them until Mr. Yezek could build his house and obtain work. The house contained one room and a good sized kitchen which had but one half window and one door. The panes of glass had been brought by a neighbor from McGregor, which was the nearest shipping point for Worth county settlers. Mr. Yezek made the window frame himself. At that time Mason City had only five houses. Osage had one store and Mitchell had a mill. There was no way to mail a letter to Mrs. Yezek's parents. For a year after they left Chicago the nearest post office was McGregor. A Jew for whom Mr. Wise was working gave Mrs. Yezek the number of his post office box and read letters to Mr. Yezek, who was unable to read for himself. On not hearing from her daughter and son-in-law for a whole year, Mrs. Wise began worrying and her fears that the Indians had killed her relatives brought on heart trouble. The Jew, knowing of this, said one day to Mrs. Wise that he had received a letter from her women relatives stating that the Indians had caught and killed the men and had taken the women, that they had escaped from the Indians and were writing for money so that they could get to Chicago. Mr. Wise then collected money at the church and added to it all that he had, giving the Jew two hundred and twenty-five dollars to send to Mrs. Yezek and the other women, but on the next day when Mr. Wise went to work the Jew had fled and the money was never sent. On the day of Mrs. Wise's death a letter was received from Mr. and Mrs. Yezek, which she kissed, but died before hearing the contents.
After completing his house Mr. Yezek began work on the mill dam in Mitchell for fifty cents a day and paid three dollars per week board. As the spring was very wet, he could work only about every other day, and thus working two months, he earned nothing but his board. The miller, Mr. English, seeing that he was going home empty-handed, gave him a little white flour and a little corn flour, which he carried on his back forty-two miles to Bristol. The water in the Shellrock being high and no bridge across it, Mr. Yezek put the flour on his back and swam across. On reaching home he found Mrs. Yezek and their two little girls, Mary and Tracy, had very little to eat. Mrs. Yezek worked for the neighbors, hoeing potatoes and corn, and received for her labor some corn bread and beans for dinner, while for her supper and breakfast she had nothing but a quart of milk. Mother-like, she let the children drink first and occasionally some was left for her, but more times there was none. Mr. Yezek afterward found work among some Norwegian settlers at making shingles, for which be received various foodstuffs. A little later he worked for Mr. Skinny, splitting rails. To his earnings he added a suit of clothes, his gun, trunk, a pair of fur mittens, which be brought from Bohemia, and a velvet cap in payment for two calves. The following winter a German from Clear Lake had him make a wedding suit with black velvet vest, a velvet collar on the vest, embroidered in white roses, and for this work he received five dollars, with which he made the first payment on a cow, which he bought from a Norwegian, the purchase price being twenty dollars. The remaining fifteen dollars he earned by sewing overalls to be used in the stock in the store of a merchant of Bristol. Later Mr. Yezek worked for Mr. Molsberry in Plymouth, but after a few weeks cut his foot and bad to return home. He found his wife almost starved, having had nothing to eat but grass for two weeks, with no salt or lard to season it. He returned with a span of oxen belonging to Mr. Molsberry and brought with him about four bushels of potatoes, which the family ate, although they had turned green from the sun. Then came another trial. Mr. Yezek became ill with ague and Mrs. Yezek, going to Bristol for medicine, was taken ill with the ague on the way. Both by turns had the chills every other day. One day Mr. Yezek would cut grass for hay and the next day he would be in bed. Mrs. Yezek would rake the day one day and the next she would be in bed. In this way they gathered twenty-two tons of hay that summer. Mr. Yezek recovered after six weeks, but Mrs. Yezek was ill for twenty-three weeks. During that time a little son was born and was baptized by the mother. He lived, however, only thirteen days and Mr. Yezek made a little coffin and buried his first son in the timber under a tree.
That fall Mr. Yezek bought an old wagon, made new wheels for it and put it in the little cattle shed near the haystack. More bad luck followed. A big prairie fire swept over the country and burned the shed, wagon and the haystack. Mr. Yezek's brother came to help to put out the fire and they placed Mrs. Yezek with the children on his wagon with some bedding and she thus drove away. She had all she could do to keep the burning limbs from the trees from falling on the children. When spring came they had hardly anything to wear, so Mr. Yezek took a bed blanket to make himself a coat, and his pants were made from a sack. He made shoes from the tops of old boots and put wooden soles on them. Mrs. Yezek wore a skirt which she had to patch with grass, not having any thread. Two silk hats worth fourteen dollars, which they brought from Chicago, they traded for twenty-three pounds of salt.
Mr. Yezek was handicapped by the fact that he could not speak the English language and was unfamiliar with methods and customs of the American people. Because of these conditions he lost his farm and later removed to Union township, Worth county, where he built a log house by the river, covering it with a hay roof. He lived there through one summer and then went to Cerro Gordo county, just across the line from Union township. In that neighborhood he spent one winter, after which he moved across the river in the same county and for three years engaged in the cultivation of rented land. He next bought one hundred and twenty acres in Lincoln township, Worth county, from Mr. Rose and the further development and improvement of the place, upon which he built a cyclone cellar, which he and his family occupied all through the winter, in the next spring he built a log cabin over the cellar and occupied that home for two years, on the expiration of which period be traded the farm for one hundred and twenty acres owned by Mr. Jones in the same township. He then concentrated his efforts and attention upon the firm, which he further improved from year to year, adding thereto until he had three hundred and thirty-five acres of rich and valuable land. Later he gave his two sons, Leopold and Frank, eighty acres each.
Joseph Yezek was one of the first settlers of his part of Worth county and contributed much to its development and improvement. Moreover, he was one of the pioneer settlers and the story of his life indicates something of the hardships and privations borne by the early residents. He was entirely unfamiliar with the English language at the time he came to Iowa and be was in very straightened financial circumstances. One child had been born while they were crossing the prairies. The family suffered untold hardships. McGregor was at that time the nearest market. Money was extremely scarce and labor was paid for in food. Wild game could be obtained and there were many Indians in the neighborhood-a fact which indicates to what extent the work of civilization and improvement had been begun in the district. Mrs. Yezek made a dress out of a bed quilt, for they had no money with which to buy goods. Threshing was done with oxen that tread out the grain on the bare ground. The story of the experiences of the family presents an adequate picture of conditions at that early day and the Yezek family in the first years of their residence here were sadly handicapped by the lack of knowledge of English and of familiarity with the customs of the people. As time went on all this was changed, however. They picked up a knowledge of the English Language and they laid the foundation for success as the years went on. Mr. Yezek possessed keen business judgment and insight and as time passed he made judicious investments in farm property and became one of the prosperous agriculturists of the community. He was also a stockholder in the Farmers' Elevator Company at Manly and in the creamery company. His political allegiance was given to the democratic party and his religious faith was that of the Catholic church. His widow occupies a fine home in Manly and has reached the advanced age of eighty-one years. Their family numbered twelve children: Mary, deceased, who was born in Bohemia; Theresa, deceased, who was born while the parents were crossing the prairies to Iowa; Henry, who died in infancy; Leopold; Frank; Augusta, deceased; Barbara; Anna; Nettie; Josephine: Joseph; and Elizabeth.
Of this family Joseph H. Yezek spent his boyhood days upon the old homestead farm, pursued his education in the public schools and continued to assist his father in the work- of the fields until the father's death. He then became the manager of the old homestead, which he is still operating and upon which he has spent his entire life with the exception of eleven months passed in California for the benefit of his health. He has greatly improved the farm property and is now operating one hundred and seventy-five acres of excellent land, of which one hundred and sixty acres is situated in Worth county, while a fifteen-acre tract of timber land is just across the border in Cerro Gordo county. There also is forty acres of land in Union township belonging to the family. Mr. Yezek is today regarded as one of the most progressive and enterprising farmers of his district, carefully directing his efforts and energies in a manner that has brought to him gratifying prosperity. Aside from his farm work he is a director of the Farmers' Cooperative Telephone Line No. 8, is a stockholder in the Farmers' Elevator Company at Manly and also in the Farmers' Creamery Company at Manly.
On the 3rd of October, 1907, Mr. Yezek was united in marriage to Miss Anna Tosel, a daughter of Joseph and Mary (Whuzl) Tosel. Mrs. Yezek was born in Lincoln township but her parents are natives of Bohemia, whence they came to the United States in early life. They have now resided for many years in Worth county, where the father is still engaged in farming. Mr. and Mrs. Yezek have two children, Andrew Edward Joseph and Leopold Francis.
The religious faith of Mr. and Mrs. Yezek is that of the Catholic church, their membership being in Manly. Mr. Yezek votes with the democratic party but has never been a politician in the usual sense of office seeking, preferring to devote his time and energies to his business affairs. His farming interests have been wisely and carefully conducted and success in substantial measure is today his. He belongs to one of the oldest and most prominent of the pioneer families of Worth county--one that has contributed in marked measure to its development and improvement from pioneer times to the present. The work which his father began at an early day has been carried forward by him, so that the name of Yezek has been long connected with the progressive agricultural development in Worth county.
Transcribed by Gordon Felland, 1/09/2005