Methodej Hlavac is from the village of Vlkos u Kyjov. -- in English -- Wolftown at Kyjov. Kyjov is the "big" city about 2
miles from the village. The town is so small it doesn't have a traffic light, just a stop sign at the one intersection. I went
here and met a branch of the family. Bohuslava Zelinkova, her husband Petr and their son Petr and daughter and her
husanband and their kids. We sat around the kitchen table and ate small finger foods and drank copious amounts of
homemade Slivovice. It is an exhilarating feeling to meet family in a foreign country who don't speak English. But we were
able to talk all night with my Czech and the dictionary that we all used when we had no choice.
What we do know is that some time in about 1910 Methodej headed westward. We have letters of recommendation from
places he worked in Vienna, Paris and London as he went towards America. That he kept his job recommendations was
extraordinary enough. But he also kept a slew of other documents. A treasure trove of information about his life in Europe
-- and at the time it was the Austrian Hungarian Empire and not the Czech Republic. Finally he took the SS Lapland to
America from Southhampton England. The Hlavac name was misspelled in the ship's passenger list. Which is another
document he kept. He also wrote on the cover of it "My name was misspelled and I corrected it" -- and he wrote it in
English, not Czech. If he worked in Paris and Vienna it is hard to imagine him that he did not have some command of
German and French, and at least English, too. So he was a polyglot, which is no mean skill.
He married first a woman named ... well, I don't know. She was at least Ms. Brouk, for we had relatives with that last name
on Long Island. They were the kids of Ms. Brouk's brother Bill. Brouk means beetle, which is a funny name, right? But this,
his first wife died in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1917. They had a daughter, though, Marion. Then in 1920 Methodej married
Ludmila Kaplan. Then they had two sons, George and Karl. And Karl is my father.
miles from the village. The town is so small it doesn't have a traffic light, just a stop sign at the one intersection. I went
here and met a branch of the family. Bohuslava Zelinkova, her husband Petr and their son Petr and daughter and her
husanband and their kids. We sat around the kitchen table and ate small finger foods and drank copious amounts of
homemade Slivovice. It is an exhilarating feeling to meet family in a foreign country who don't speak English. But we were
able to talk all night with my Czech and the dictionary that we all used when we had no choice.
What we do know is that some time in about 1910 Methodej headed westward. We have letters of recommendation from
places he worked in Vienna, Paris and London as he went towards America. That he kept his job recommendations was
extraordinary enough. But he also kept a slew of other documents. A treasure trove of information about his life in Europe
-- and at the time it was the Austrian Hungarian Empire and not the Czech Republic. Finally he took the SS Lapland to
America from Southhampton England. The Hlavac name was misspelled in the ship's passenger list. Which is another
document he kept. He also wrote on the cover of it "My name was misspelled and I corrected it" -- and he wrote it in
English, not Czech. If he worked in Paris and Vienna it is hard to imagine him that he did not have some command of
German and French, and at least English, too. So he was a polyglot, which is no mean skill.
He married first a woman named ... well, I don't know. She was at least Ms. Brouk, for we had relatives with that last name
on Long Island. They were the kids of Ms. Brouk's brother Bill. Brouk means beetle, which is a funny name, right? But this,
his first wife died in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1917. They had a daughter, though, Marion. Then in 1920 Methodej married
Ludmila Kaplan. Then they had two sons, George and Karl. And Karl is my father.
| Methodej |
| No kids |
| Karl - Camille |
| 2. Shirley |
| 1. Edith |
| Marion - Ludwig Stuber |
| George |
| (2) Ludmila |
| (1) Ms. Brouk |
| Alissa |
| Jennifer |
| Christopher |
| Neil Matthew |
| Neil -- Carol |
| Tracy |
| Jessica |
| Gary - Nancy |
| Robert |
| James (Me) |
| Charles |
| Karla - David Weiss |
| Michael |
| Julia |
| Audrey |
| Amy - (1) Danny (2) Tom Lunquist |
| Sarah |
| Since those from Marion are Stubers, and George had no kids, and Karl's three sons had no kids, that's more or less the name of the Hlavac family name of Vlkos u Kyjov in the United States. |
| Stepkids |
| None of the 3 are married |