Using a probing rod, Fred Simon searched around his great-grandmother’s headstone in the Czech Republic. All of a sudden, he hit something.
About a foot below the surface, Simon had found the footstone of his great-grandfather, Josef Polacek. This would be the first of several discoveries about Czech heritage by Simon, who became president of the Czech Heritage Club on Wednesday and presented to a roomful of people at the Rice County Historical Society on Thursday.
During his introduction, he explained that he coined the phrase “the Bohemian Triangle” to describe the area that includes Rice, Le Sueur and Scott counties where many Czech immigrants settled in the mid-to-late 1800s. Bohemian is essentially synonymous with Czech, according to Simon.
The century following the industrial revolution, many immigrants fled the economic organization known as “serfdom,” which means land is owned by nobility and the serfs, or peasants, do all the work but get a fraction of the yield.
“Kind of makes you wonder why would people want to move to America,” Simon joked. “So why did our ancestors decided to leave their Bohemian homeland, which is very beautiful, and come to the US and eventually Minnesota? A number of the reasons: their land could no longer support family size, agriculture, agricultural depression, compulsory military service, and most importantly, a desire for better economic opportunities.”
In Minnesota, a high concentration of Czech immigrants settled in the area now known as the Bohemian Triangle. More specifically, they settled in Montgomery, New Prague, Veseli and Lonsdale.
Many remnants of this heritage has been preserved and celebrated throughout the cities. Among the most obvious examples, Montgomery’s weekly festival Kolacky Days and New Prague’s name referring to the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague.
Lonsdale is the odd one out. It began as a Norwegian settlement.
“Lonsdale actually started out as a small settlement of farmers that built a church and called the area Trondheim, named after a city in Norway,” Simon said. “But shortly after, a number of Bohemian families migrated to this area. And up until a few years ago, Lonsdale probably had one of the higher percentages of Czech families in the area.”
The area known as Trondheim moved a few miles away to be closer to a new rail line, eventually holding a grand opening for the town of Lonsdale on July 16, 1902. The city was established a year later.
“Can anyone tell me how Lonsdale got its name?” Simon asked the crowd.
Multiple audience members chimed in that they’d been trying to find that out for years. Simon said no one is quite sure how the name came to be.
Following the presentation, Rice County Historical Society Executive Director Dave Nichols noted the Norwegian name “Lanz.”
“Dale” is a Norwegian word that is typically translated to “valley,” though it can also mean “swell” or “swallow.” There is also a town in Norway called Dale.
Those interested in hearing a shortened version of the presentation can view it on the Czech Genealogy Society’s YouTube channel under the title “Minnesota’s Bohemian Triangle — Fred Simon.”
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