Czech South Dakotan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Czech South Dakotans are residents of the state of South Dakota who are of Czech ancestry. The Czech language is the seventh most common language spoken in South Dakota, with 645 speakers.^[1]

History

The first Czech immigrants started arriving in Dakota Territory in 1868, and settled west of Yankton. These poor people from Bohemia came to America with hope of improving their living conditions and attaining a better future. The majority of Czechs settled around Tabor. Being mostly of the Catholic faith, their first concern was to organize a religious community. Church services first started taking place in 1871 at the log home of Vaclav Janda, one mile south of Tabor. The town site of Tabor was purchased from Johanna Kocer on April 14, 1872. In that same year, work began at the north end of the site for the first church of the St. Wenceslaus parish. The church was completed in 1874, and was constructed of chalk rock cut near the Missouri River south of Tabor. The chalk rock church was quickly outgrown, and a new 42 X 132 red brick church was built in 1898. The brick church still serves as the House of the Lord for today's parishioners. Since St. Wenceslaus Church is the only church in a town of 400 people, parish activities and functions are social highlights for the community.

References

↑ "Czech language". U.S. English. Retrieved 2013-07-09.

External links

v t e European Americans

Central Europe	Austrian¹ Croatian Czech Silesian Estonian German¹ Frisian Sorbian German Texan Pennsylvania Dutch Hungarian Hungarian Ohioans Latvian Liechtensteiner Lithuanian Luxembourgian Polish¹ Kashubian Slovak Slovene Swiss

Eastern Europe	Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Georgian Russian²¹ Chechen Cossack Kalmyk Ukrainian Cossack Rusyn

Northern Europe (Scandinavians)	Danish Greenlandic Finnish Icelandic Norwegian Norwegian Dakotan Norwegian Minnesotan Sami Swedish

Southeast Europe³	Albanian Bosnian Bulgarian Cypriot Greek Macedonian Moldovan Montenegrin Romanian Serbian Turkish

Southern Europe	Italian Sicilian Maltese Portuguese Sanmarinese Spanish Asturian Basque Catalan Galician Hispano Isleño

Western Europe	Belgian Flemish British English Scots-Irish Scottish Welsh Cornish Manx Dutch French Basque Breton Cajun Corsican Louisiana Creole Irish

Other Europeans	Romani people in the United States Hungarian Slovak Romanies

¹ Poles came to the United States legally as Austrians, Germans, Prussians or Russians throughout the 19th century, because from 1772-1795 till 1918, all Polish lands had been partitioned between imperial Austria, Prussia (a protoplast of Germany) and Russia until Poland regained its sovereignty in the wake of World War I. ² Russia is a transcontinental country in eastern Europe and northern Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives in European Russia, therefore Russia as a whole is included as a European country here. ³ Yugoslav Americans are the American people from the former Yugoslavia.

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