# Jackson Township, Winneshiek County, Iowa ## A Bohemian Family's First American Home When the Bartosh family stepped off the immigrant trail in 1865, they came to Winneshiek County in the northeastern corner of Iowa. They had left the villages clustered around the parish of Neznašov, in the Písek region of Bohemia — a country of small peasant cottagers, farm hands, and hind laborers who worked land they mostly did not own. Winneshiek County offered what Bohemia could not: the chance to work and eventually own farmland of their own. ## The First to Arrive Mathias (Matej) Bartosh, born in Bohemia in 1832, had served as a soldier in 1856 before marrying and raising a family. He brought his family to America in 1865 and located first in Winneshiek County, establishing an early foothold for the wider family before he moved westward to Pocahontas County in 1874. His time in Winneshiek was the family's introduction to Iowa soil. Jakub (Jacob) Bartos, born about 1834, had married Anna Katharina Stara on February 20, 1860, in the parish of Neznašov. Jakub had been a *pacholek* — a farm hand — and *podruh* in the old country, the son of a small cottager from Albrechtice. He and Anna made Winneshiek County their home for decades, Jakub recorded here in 1880 and again in 1900, and Anna present through 1880, 1885, 1895, and 1900. Their long residence anchored the family in Jackson Township across a full generation. ## Children Born Between Two Worlds The children of this family bridged Bohemia and Iowa. Frank Louis Bartosh, born August 2, 1864, in the village of Neznašov, was only seven months old when his parents carried him across the ocean. Mary Bartosh had been born in Bohemia in 1860. For them, Winneshiek County was the place where a European childhood gave way to an American life. Frank married Mary Eva Riha, also Bohemian-born, on June 7, 1887, in Iowa. Together they raised eight children born on Iowa soil, and in 1910 the whole household appears together in Jackson Township: - **Frank Louis Bartosh** and his wife **Mary Eva Riha** - **Frank Albert Bartosh** - **Joseph R Bartosh** - **Mary Eva Bartosh** - **John Frank Bartosh** - **Stella A Bartosh** - **William Lawrence Bartosh** - **Anna Elizabeth Bartosh** - **James T Bartosh** Anna Elizabeth, born in 1888, would later marry and raise her own family, but in 1910 she was still counted among her parents' household in Jackson Township. John Bartosh, born about 1870, was a steady presence here across the decades, recorded in 1880, 1895, 1900, and 1910. Theresa (Tresi) Zack Znek belonged to the same community, present in both 1900 and 1910. ## The End of an Era By 1910, three generations of the family had been counted in Jackson Township. But the following year, in 1911, Frank Louis Bartosh moved north to North Dakota, where he died in Lisbon on July 14, 1919. His departure marked the close of the family's long chapter in Winneshiek County — the place where Bohemian immigrants had first set down roots in America, raised American-born children, and prepared the next generation to move on to newer frontiers.