# Winneshiek County, Iowa For the Bartosh family, Winneshiek County was the first foothold in America—the place where a Bohemian farming family set down roots before some of them pushed on to the open prairies farther west. ## A Bohemian Family Arrives Mathias (Matej) Bartosh, born in Bohemia in 1832, came to America in 1865 and located in Winneshiek County. He had served as a soldier in the war with Italy in 1856, and in 1858 married Anna Stejskal, born in 1829. When the family crossed the Atlantic, they carried with them children already born in Bohemia and would add more once settled in Iowa. Winneshiek County, in the far northeastern corner of Iowa, drew Czech-speaking Catholic families like the Bartoshes in the decades after the Civil War. The wooded, rolling country along the rivers there offered land to farm and a growing community of countrymen who shared their language and faith. For Mathias and Anna, the county was a first American home—a place to establish themselves before the next move. That next move came in 1874, when Mathias took up land in Center Township, Pocahontas County, farther west on the open prairie. But daughter Anna, born in Iowa in 1866, marks the family's Winneshiek years: the household was here, and children were being born on American soil. ## A Wedding in the New Home The family's presence in Winneshiek County is anchored by a marriage. On 22 February 1876, Mary Bartosh—born 4 May 1860 in Bohemia, the daughter of Jakub Bartos—married Wenceslaus (Wenzel) Vsetecka. Mary later married again on 16 March 1909. ## The Bartos and Bartosh Households Jakub (Jacob) Bartos, born in Bohemia and married to Anna Stara in 1860, made his home in the county through the closing decades of the nineteenth century, residing there in 1885 and again in 1895. He died on 19 November 1901. The family continued in Winneshiek County into the twentieth century. John Bartosh and Anna Stejskal both appear in the county in 1905, and John was recorded there again in 1915 and on 1 January 1925—alongside Theresa (Tresi) Zack Znek, also in residence on that date. John Frank Bartosh was living in the county in 1915. William Lawrence Bartosh was born here on 28 July 1907. ## Marriages Across the Generations Winneshiek County remained the setting for the family's important days well into the new century: - **Anna Elizabeth Bartosh**, born in 1888, married **William Perry Cooper** on 11 December 1909. - **James T. Bartosh** married **Anna Josephine Martinek** on 24 January 1922. ## A Place of Beginnings For the Bartosh family, Winneshiek County was where the American story began. Some, like Mathias and Anna, used it as a stepping-stone before claiming prairie land farther west. Others stayed, married, raised children, and were buried in its soil across three generations, from Jakub's arrival to the households recorded there in 1925. It was, in the truest sense, the family's landing place in the new country.