The Family

I think the Godfather I and II are two of the best movies I've ever seen.

In this scene, Robert Deniro playing a young Vito Corleone is shown sitting on tenement steps in New York with his young family (Carmella, Sonny, Fredo, and Michael if you've seen the films) having just arrived from Sicily. Vito is struggling to find work on the docks to feed the family and pay the rent. He hasn't yet turned to a life of crime. Their story really resonates with me when thinking about our immigrant story. But the films wouldn't be so powerful without the compelling characters.

I started out without knowing the characters in our story. I knew the name of my great grandfather and grandmother, Rudolph and Lydia, and I knew that they had siblings but I wasn't sure how many. One of my most significant puzzle pieces came from this obituary that I found with the help of some very nice ladies at the Czech and Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois 

This is from the Denni Hlastel (Daily Herald) which was a Czech language newspaper published in Chicago for many decades. I don't speak Czech but here is my best attempt to translate 

                                                        Death Notification

We announce the death of our dearly beloved father, brother, grandfather, great grandfather

                                                        Jan Vokoun

who died on 19 March 1902 at 4:30 pm. He arrived in America 26 years ago from Kralovice, the county of Prague, and he belonged to the Old-Czech Settlers Association. The funeral will be on Saturday 22 March 10 am from the house of mourning 598 California Ave to the Czech-national cemetery. Please send condolences to:

Frantisek, Rudolf, Alois, Jan, Vicenc, Josef, sons. Anna Jellison, daughter. Marie Novotna, sister. James Jellison, son-in-law. Josefa, Ludmila, Mathilda, Marie, Ellska (Alice), daughters-in-law and other friends.

Whoever wants to attend the funeral, kindly ask for Rudolf Vokoun at 611 Center Ave noon till 6 pm on Friday night.

This is how I discovered the siblings: Frank, Rudolph (my great grandfather), Louis, John, Vincent, Joseph and Anna. There is also Mary a sister. I was hoping that the names of spouses lined up with their counterpart. Frank-Josepha, Rudolph-Ludmila (Lydia) and then Vincent-Alice I knew about. The others, however, didn't jive.

The second piece of the puzzle was the 1880 census. (Sorry if the photos don't show up so well).

I don't know how well the picture shows up but the page looks crumbled up, torn and taped back together. So its really, really fortunate that it was still readable. Then there is that Voklun misspelling. Makes you wonder how people did this stuff before websites and artificial intelligence could assist in searching records. 

Here is a closer view of the record

This is how I put together the seven brothers. Jan and Josie are living in this building as are Rudolf 20, Louis 18, Charles 16, Annie 14, John 10, Vincent 8, Joseph 4. Obviously, Frank has moved out but I know that he is around from the obituary and other records. I couldn't figure out the spouses right away. That came later. 

Lots of people on these genealogy websites love to attach sources and try to build the biggest tree possible but I have found that if I really want to learn about the people, I have to read the documents closely and connect dots.

This census is four years after they have arrived in 1876. All the siblings were born in Bohemia except the youngest, Joseph. The address is 171 Forquer Street but there are 5 families at this address and they all have lots (LOTS) of kids. You have to wonder how much room each family had but I doubt it was much. Crowded in a manner that is hard for me to comprehend. It's a rough neighborhood. Here is an account of a murder at 166 Forquer (ie. right across the street). Also, by age 16, the kids are done with school and out working. In our family's case that is shoe making and cigar making. The lack of means seems pretty apparent. But this wouldn't last long. The family made impressive leaps very quickly which you will see as the story goes along.

In the closer view, I added this other family. The family name is Novotony. The mother is Mary which happens to be the same as Jan's sister, Mary Novotna, from the obituary. Remember the Czech language put the 'na' to the end of names to form the feminine. She is younger than Jan but all of her kids were born in Illinois not Bohemia. I believe that Jan and Josepha brought their large family to join his sister and the Novotony family who had arrived 10 years earlier. I am not going to lie. Some of these things I noticed as I was putting this post together. Don't think I have the complete picture, I'm just trying to put it together.

As one can gleam from the census records, the living conditions of urban immigrants of the late 19th century with regards to crowding and sanitation were nowhere close to acceptable by our modern standards. In the early 1850s, Dr. Nathan Davis, chairman of a Chicago Medical Society committee investigating basic sanitation in Chicago, warned that houses were being built too close together, and not just in slum neighborhoods. Women and children, he added, were five times as likely to get sick as men who were more likely to go out at night, even if only to the corner bar. Garbage was still being thrown into the river or allowed to fester in fetid alleys, prompting Dr. Davis to campaign almost single-handedly for a sewer system. Despite Dr. Davis’ early efforts, an 1881 house-to-house check of one ward made up mostly of immigrant-filled tenements turned up 18,976 people living in 1,107 mostly one-room hovels that were sometimes so cramped there wasn’t even enough standing room for the entire family.

This is pretty compelling to me. The other branches of my family tree were mostly farmers in the rural upper Midwest so to learn about the branch struggling of new immigrants in urban, industrial America of the late 19th century gives me a different perspective on where I came from.

Just like the Corleones, family connections are huge (figuratively and literally!) and life-threatening loving. Fortunately, Jan stuck to shoemaking rather that extortion, racketeering, and 'business' otherwise our story might be a whole lot different!