17TH CENTURY
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| 1633 | Augustine Herrman (Augustin Herman), the first known immigrant from Bohemia, comes to New Amsterdam in the employment of the West India Company. He becomes a surveyor and one of the founders of the Virginia tobacco trade. Bohemia is part of the present-day Czech Republic, but it is not clear whether Herman's mother tongue was Czech or German. |
| 1647 | Frederick Philips (Bedrich Filip), a Protestant exile from Bohemia, arrives in New Amsterdam. Chroniclers refer to him as a 'Bohemian merchant prince'. He is one of the wealthiest men of his time in the American colonies. |
| 1660 | Augustine Herrman moves from New York to Maryland. He obtains a 20,000-acre (8,100-hectare) land grant in Cecil and Newcastle counties and builds Bohemia Manor. |
| 1670 | Herrman draws the first map of Virginia and Maryland, "As it is Planted and Inhabited this Present Year 1670 Surveyed and Exactly Drawne by the Only Labour and Endeavour of Augustin Herrman, Bohemiensis." |
18TH CENTURY
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| 1735 | First group of Moravian Brethren sail to America. These descendants of the followers of Jan Hus were exiled after the defeat of the Protestants in 1620 and settled in Saxony. Although the Brethren became overwhelmingly German, they keep the memory of their origin by retaining the name Moravian Brethren. |
| 1736–1741 | The first Moravian Brethren appear in New York. In Pennsylvania the Brethren found Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Lititz. |
| 1748 | The first Moravian church is built in New York. |
| 1776 |
More than 2,000 Moravian Brethren live in the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence.
William Paca, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence for Maryland, is probably of Czech extraction.
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| 1791 | John Wilkes Kittera, thought to be a descendant of Moravian Brethren, is elected as a Federalist to the Second Congress; he is then elected to four succeeding Congresses. |
1800–1849
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| 1801 | John Wilkes Kittera is appointed by President Jefferson as United States attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. |
| 1832 | Anthony (Antonin) Dignowity from Kutna Hora, linguist, inventor, and physician, arrives in New York. He practices medicine in San Antonio until his death in 1875. He is an abolitionist and a friend of Sam Houston. |
| 1836 |
Francis W. Lassak (Frantisek Vlasak), a successful merchant, settles in New York. He starts as a furrier, probably in cooperation with John Jacob Astor, acquires considerable wealth, and becomes one of the few Czech millionaires in America.
Jan Nepomuk Neumann, born 1811, arrives in New York from the southern Bohemian town of Prachatice. He is ordained a Catholic priest in old St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 1852 he becomes the fourth bishop of Philadelphia. He is beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1977.
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| 1840 | A Czech Jew from Domazlice, Simon Polak, a doctor of medicine, comes to St. Louis. There he founds an eye and ear clinic and an institution for the blind, one of the best in the state of Missouri. |
| 1847 | Czech immigrants establish their first settlement in Texas at Catspring, in Austin County. The names of 14 of the early settlers are preserved. Cenek Paclt, an adventurer and globetrotter, is the only soldier of Czech nationality serving in the Mexican War of whom there is any record. He claims to have taken part in several of the battles that ended in the seizure of Mexico City. |
| 1848 |
The first important Czech settlements in the United States are founded in Wisconsin. A. Kroupa, a political refugee, is the first Czech to reach Racine. The city of Racine soon becomes the first American city with a considerable number of Czech settlers. Caledonia, near Racine, is the first Czech agricultural settlement.
The political refugee Gustav Adam, a Czech patriot who participated in the insurrection against Austria, is the first Czech to reach Cleveland. He is a good musician and becomes an orchestra leader in Cleveland's theater, the Athenaeum.
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| 1848–1857 | Vojtech Naprstek, considered to be the spiritual father of Czech journalism in America, lives for about a decade in the United States. He publishes the freethinking Milwaukee Flug-Blatter, the first periodical of a Czech in America; although a German-language paper, the Flug-Blatter was read largely by Czechs. Naprstek encourages Czech Americans to organize and publish their own Czech newspaper. After his return to Bohemia he familiarizes his country with American ideas, institutions, and methods. His efforts, experiences, and collections become the basis of the present Naprstek Museum of Asian, African, and American cultures in Prague. |
| 1849 | Francis Adolph Valenta, a Moravian doctor of medicine, leaves for America. He is probably the first Czech immigrant to settle in Chicago, where he practices medicine and owns a pharmacy. |
1850–1899
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| 1852 | One of the early Czech settlers in Chicago, John Slavik from Brno, opens the first Czech restaurant and saloon on Clark Street. |
| 1855 | The Czech Catholic priest, Henry Lipovsky, founds the first Czech parish in St. Louis and builds the first Czech church in the United States, dedicated to St. John Nepomuk. |
| 1856 | The first school teaching the Czech language and history is opened in New York. |
| 1857 |
A Czech cultural organization called Slovanska lipa (Slavic linden) is founded in Detroit. It is modeled on a patriotic association of the same name that was established in Prague in the revolutionary year 1848. Cleveland is followed by other cities. Soon every larger Czech settlement has its own Slovanska lipa, a cultural center that also performs important social functions.
The first Czech Catholic priest to Cleveland is Father Antonin Krasny. He is one of the Czech patriots sentenced to prison by the Austrian authorities after the unsuccessful revolt of 1848. He is given amnesty and leaves for America. On his initiative a Czech Catholic church is built in Cleveland in 1867.
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| 1859 | Anthony Dignowity publishes Bohemia under Austrian Despotism, the first English-language work about the situation of the Czechs in Austria, written and published in America. |
| 1860 |
The first Czech newspaper in America, Slowan Amerikansky, published by Frantisek Korizek, appears in Racine, Wisconsin. It is a semi-monthly, then a weekly, with 450 subscribers. In the same year another Czech weekly, Narodni noviny, is launched by Czech immigrants in St. Louis.
The composer Jan Balatka, a Czech by birth, becomes the conductor of the Philharmonic Society of Chicago.
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| 1861 | The first two Czech newspapers published in America merge under the name Slavie. Racine becomes the home office of the new weekly. Published until 1946, Slavie has a number of distinguished editors, such as Frantisek Mracek, Vojtech Masek, and Charles Jonas (Karel Jonas), the future Democratic lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. |
| 1862 | The Czechs of Chicago establish their first Czech school; they also have the first Czech lawyer, K. Kolacnik. |
| 1863 | Charles Jonas is a 23-year-old political emigre when he arrives in Racine to take over the editorship of Slavie. He begins publishing dictionaries, handbooks, and guides for Czech immigrants. During the Franco-Prussian war, 1870–1871, he is an American war correspondent in Germany and France. In 1885 he is appointed the U.S. consul in Prague. In 1890 he is elected lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. He becomes the U.S. consul in St. Petersburg and in Crefeld, Germany, in 1894. For his important role in the Czech community and in American public life he is sometimes referred to as 'the first Czech in America'. |
| 1864 | Frederick George Novy (1864–1957), one of America's pioneers in bacteriology, is born in Chicago the year his parents arrive from Bohemia. Acclaimed for his original research in microbiology and for his important work in laboratory techniques, he becomes a model for the character of Max Gottlieb in Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith. He is known for his strong commitment to truth and to meticulous scientific work. In 1901 Novy is appointed a member of the United States commission to investigate the bubonic plague in the Orient. He is associated with the University of Michigan, where he is named chairman of the new Department of Bacteriology in 1902 and later serves as dean of the medical school. |
| 1865 | The first Czech book on record in America is published in Racine: Pravda cili volne posouzeni udalosti a pokroku XIX. stoleti (The truth, or an open discussion of events and progress in the nineteenth century), written by Karel Prochazka. |
| 1866 | The first Czech workmen's club is founded in Chicago. Similar clubs follow in Cleveland (1869) and New York (1870). |
| 1868 | Czech women in Chicago found the first organization of their own, called Libuse. |
| 1879 | Tomas Capek, an 18-year old immigrant from Strakonice in southern Bohemia, arrives in the United States. He is graduated from the University of Michigan and Columbia Law School, becomes a legislator in Nebraska, and later becomes a successful lawyer and banker. As a writer he records the history, culture, and social life of Czech immigrants in a number of significant works. His The Cechs (Bohemians) in America, published in 1920 and reprinted in 1969, is a basic work on Czech-American history. |
| 1881 | Adolph Sabath, born in southern Bohemia in 1866, immigrates to the United States. He serves for 44 years as a Democratic U.S. Representative from Illinois, holding the record for consecutive terms in office. He introduces the first workmen's compensation bill and the first old-age pension plan, and is identified with the fight for social security legislation, the liberalization of immigration policy, and civil rights. During World War I, he is an active supporter of the Czechoslovak independence movement. |
| 1882 | Ales Hrdlicka arrives in the United States. The renowned scientist was born in Humpolec in Bohemia in 1869. In 1905 he sets up the division of physical anthropology in the Smithsonian Institution and becomes division curator in 1910. He founds the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1918 and is its first editor. In 1929 he founds the American Association of Physical Anthropology and serves as its first president. He is the foremost specialist in anthropometry and American Indian anthropology. |
| 1885 | Oberlin College organizes a theological seminary for Protestant Czechs in connection with its Slavic Department. |
| 1887 | Czech Benedictines, who had come to the United States to take care of the spiritual needs of Catholic immigrants, establish the only Czech institution of higher education in America, the College of St. Procopius in Chicago. It moves to Lisle, Illinois, in 1901. |
| 1892–1895 | Antonin Dvorak, the best known of the Czech composers in America, is director of the National Music Conservatory in New York. He ia deeply interested in the American folk idiom, especially in the melodies of black Americans and in American Indian rhythms, and advises his students to use them in creating an American music. Between January and May 1893 he writes his famous New World Symphony. |
| 1894 | Rudolf Ruzicka, born in Kourim in Bohemia, arrives in the United States as the 11-year old son of Czech immigrants. He becomes a noted graphic artist, recognized especially for his wood engravings. He devotes an interesting part of his work to New York and Newark. Sent to Italy by Scribner's, he makes a series of beautiful engravings for the book Fountains of Papal Rome, published in 1915. |
1900–1949
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| 1904 | Alphonse Mucha, one of the world's greatest decorative artists, arrives in the United States. He spends much of the next 17 years in this country, designing, painting, and teaching at academies in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Supported by the philantropist Charles R. Crane, he creates a cycle of 20 large paintings, the Slavic Epic, in the early 1920s. |
| 1910 | The Czech artist Vojtech Preissig arrives in New York and for the next 20 years works and teaches in the United States, where he introduces many new printing techniques. During World War I, while he serves as director of graphic arts at the Wentworth Institute in Boston, he designs a set of now famous posters for Czechoslovak volunteer forces and for the U.S. war effort. |
| 1915 | The leaders of the Czech National Alliance and the Slovak League sign the Cleveland Agreement, in which they pledge to cooperate for the common goal of independent statehood for the Czechs and Slovaks. |
| 1918 | Czech and Slovak organizations in America form a joint association that declares itself to be the American branch of Masaryk's Czechoslovak National Council. |
| 1923 | Karel Capek's 'fantastic melodrama' R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is translated into English and produced in New York. In subsequent years many of Capek's novels and stories (War with the Newts, The Absolute at Large, Tales from Two Pockets, The Makropoulus Secret, and others) are translated and published in America. |
| 1931 | Anton Joseph Cermak, born a coalminer's son in Kladno, near Prague, is elected mayor of Chicago. Cermak is Chicago's first foreign-born mayor. In 1933 Cermak is killed in Miami by the assassin's bullet intended for President Roosevelt. Before dying he says to Roosevelt, "I am glad it was me instead of you." |
| 1938 | In the period of tension between Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany, culminating in the Munich Agreement, the Czech National Alliance is reactivated and a Slovak National Alliance is established in the United States. In two years the Czech National Alliance has 213 chapters, with more than 30,000 members. |
| 1939 | The University of Chicago invites the exiled Czechoslovak president, Edvard Benes, to deliver a series of lectures. |
| 1940 | As in World War I, the representatives of the Czech National Alliance, the Czech Catholics, and the Slovak National Alliance form the Czechoslovak National Council, which coordinates their activities in support of the Czechoslovak government in exile in London, headed by Edvard Benes. |
| 1941 | Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, born in 1890 and often called the leading Czech composer of his time, immigrates to the United States, where he composes Memorial to Lidice for orchestra, and a number of symphonies, concertos, and chamber works. In the 1950s he returns to Europe and dies in Switzerland in 1959. |
| 1942 | A township near Joliet, Illinois, is renamed Lidice, in commemoration of the village in central Bohemia destroyed by Nazi occupiers. In the Czech village of Lidice all the men were shot to death, the women were transported to concentration camps, and the small children were sent to Germany for adoption. |
| 1948 |
In a coup, the Communist Party takes over the government in Prague. As a response to the suppression of democracy, former members of the Czechoslovak parliament who were refugees in the United States establish the Council of Free Czechoslovakia in Washington, D.C.
Francis Dvornik settles in the United States. Born in Moravia in 1893, Father Dvornik is a Byzantine scholar of world repute. In America he is associated with the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, until his death in 1975. He is also known for his studies on early Slavic history.
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1950–PRESENT
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| 1958 | Two hundred intellectuals of Czech and Slovak origin found the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in America. The noted mathematician Vaclav Hlavaty, of Indiana University, is its first president. |
| 1960 | (March 7) The 110th anniversary of the birth of the first president of Czechoslovakia, the U.S. Post Office issues a stamp honoring Thomas G. Masaryk. |
| 1961 | The Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews is established in New York. |
| 1969 | Czech film director Milos Forman, born in Caslav in Bohemia in 1932, begins a remarkable American career. His best-known Czech films are the prizewinning Loves of a Blond and The Fireman's Ball. His American films include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (winning Academy Awards for directing, best film of the year, best actor, best actress, and best screenplay in 1975), Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus, which was awarded eight Oscars in 1986. |
| 1970 | Arnost Lustig, Czech writer and Holocaust survivor, comes to the United States. He becomes a professor of literature and film at the American University in Washington. His works published in America include Darkness Casts No Shadow, Diamonds of the Night, A Prayer for Katerina Horovitzova, and The Unloved. |
| 1972 | Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, lands on the moon. Cernan was born in Chicago in 1934 to a Czech mother and a Slovak father. After the end of the manned lunar missions, he acts as senior U.S. negotiator in direct discussions with the Soviet Union on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. |
| 1976 | Writers Josef and Zdena Skvorecky establish Sixty-Eight Publishers in Toronto. Their publishing house develops into the main supplier of Czech literature for the Czech-reading public in the United States. During the period of Communist repression in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion in 1968, Sixty-Eight Publishers becomes an important focus of free Czech publishing activity. Most of Josef Skvorecky's novels (such as The Cowards, The Engineer of Human Souls, The Miracle Game, and Dvorak in Love) are published in English translation in the United States. |
| 1997 | (January) Madeleine Albright is confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State and becomes the highest ranking female official in U.S. history. She was born in Prague in 1937 as the daughter of a Czech diplomat, came to the United States at the age of 11 years, was graduated from Wellesley College, and earned a PhD at Columbia before entering politics. Between 1993 and 1997, Albright serves as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. |
Source: Library of Congress
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