# Casey, Ransom County, North Dakota Casey was a small farming community in Ransom County, in the southeastern quarter of North Dakota, where a Czech-descended family put down roots in the second decade of the twentieth century. ## The Bartosh Family Arrives Frank Louis Bartosh was born in the village of Neznašov, in the Písek region of Bohemia, on August 2, 1864, the son of a cottager named Jakub Bartoš. He was only seven months old when his family left for America, settling in Iowa. It was there that Frank grew up, and there in 1887 that he married Mary Eva Riha, herself born in Bohemia and brought to America as a child. Their eight children were all born in Iowa. In 1911, Frank moved his family to North Dakota, joining the broader migration of Czech-descended farmers who had already established themselves in Iowa and were now taking up land further west. By 1915, Frank, Mary, and several of their grown and growing children were living in and around Casey. Frank did not live long in North Dakota. He died on July 14, 1919, in nearby Lisbon, only eight years after the move. Mary Eva remained in the community, appearing at Casey in 1915, 1920, and 1925, a widow living on among her children until her own death in 1943. ## The Next Generation Several of Frank and Mary's children made Casey their home well into adulthood, spanning the years from the family's arrival through 1940. - **Joseph R Bartosh** was among the most rooted, present at Casey across three full decades — 1915, 1920, 1930, 1935, and again on April 1, 1940. - **John Frank Bartosh** lived here in 1920, 1935, and 1940. - **William Lawrence Bartosh** appears in the community in 1920 and 1930. - **Frank Albert Bartosh** and **Stella A Bartosh** were both here in 1920, Stella having been present as early as 1915. - **Florence Anna Portz** had the longest continuous presence of all, recorded at Casey in 1910, 1920, 1930, 1935, and 1940 — spanning the entire period the family knew the place. - **Otille A "Tillie" Adamec** was living in the community by 1935 and remained through April 1, 1940. ## Life in Casey For this family, Casey was a rural farming settlement where the immigrant generation and their American-born children lived close together, marrying, raising families, and working the land as they had in Iowa before them. The clustering of Bartosh names — and the married daughters carrying the Portz and Adamec surnames — across the same censuses shows a family that stayed near one another for a full generation, from the years just before the First World War through the end of the Great Depression. By 1940, the family that Frank Louis Bartosh had brought north from Iowa in 1911 was still firmly present in the Casey neighborhood, three decades after his arrival and two decades after his death.