Vaclav J. Smrz
Vaclav J. Smrz was born in Bohemia in September 1851. His obituary gives the day as 18 September. His gravestone gives the year as 1850. He married Marie Barcal, a native of Vodňany in southern Bohemia.
In the late 1870s the couple left Bohemia for Chicago. His obituary dates the move to 1876 and hers to 1879. Vaclav worked there as a bricklayer for many years. Their sons were Frank James Smrz, born in November 1875, and James F. Smrz, who stayed in Chicago.
In 1897 Vaclav and Marie moved to Eastman, in Crawford County, Wisconsin. In 1910, at about fifty-nine, he went west to Montana and filed a homestead nine miles north of Hingham, joining the claim his son Frank had taken. He made it a permanent home and stayed on it the rest of his life. His obituary called him a hardy pioneer who saw a great agricultural future for the country.
On Sunday morning, 5 March 1922, he got up, lit the fire and ate a hearty breakfast his wife had cooked. Then he went out to his chores and was stricken with heart failure. Marie found his body soon afterward. He was 70. His funeral was held at St. Mary's Church in Hingham on the following Wednesday, with Father Corbet of Havre officiating, and he was buried in the Hingham Union Cemetery. He left his wife, his two sons and thirteen grandchildren, and one brother in Chicago. Another brother had died two months before him. His flat stone reads VACLAV SMRZ 1850 1922.
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Cite: Heirology, "Vaclav J. Smrz (1851-1922)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/vaclav-j-smrz-1851-1922-8ed78a.