Frank Hanzl
1861-1906
Born: Lisov, Bohemia, Czech Republic
Died: Gate, Beaver, Oklahoma, United States
1861-1906
Born: Lisov, Bohemia, Czech Republic
Died: Gate, Beaver, Oklahoma, United States
<div>In the early 1900's, Frank Hanzl, his brother Roman, his brother-in-law, John Sukdol (married to Antonia Hanzl) went to OK Territory to establish a homestead for their families. They built sod houses; then sent for the women and children to join them. At that time, the railroad ended at Englewood, KS and the men met their families there with wagons to transport them and their belongings (and probably some furniture) to their new home on the prairie. At that time, the ground was fertile and many farmed, although there were some large cattle herds also.</div><div>Frank Hanzl died in 1906 of a ruptured appendix, leaving Mary with 6 girls and a boy to raise.</div><div>I don't know what year the Hanzls were set up with a telephone exchange but Mary and her girls operated it, serving 3 different communities in OK Territory. Her son, Edward, was in WWI and served in Germany.</div><div>Mary saved up and purchased a barn first; later ordering a Sears Roebuck house for her family. She never went in debt as many did but saved and paid cash for everything she bought. </div>
Frank lives at 693 W 17 when his children were born in Chicago. A John Hanzl lives at 593 W 17 at the same time. John is married to Mary Drazdik. John is a locksmith. On 3 Oct 1892, John, 37, and Mary, 30, have a daughter Bozena Hanzl. Mary is listed as having 5 children. This would mean that John Hanzl was born about 1855 and Mary was born about 1862. John Hanzl cannot be a brother to Frank, born in 1861, because his brother John, was born in about 1880. Could this John be a brother to his father Frank, born about 1831?
<span>Free Thought</span> <p>Free thought embraced reason and anticlericalism, and freethinkers formed their ideas about religion independently of tradition, authority, and established belief. A product of the Enlightenment, free thought was deist, not atheist. In nineteenth-century Chicago, freethinkers, many of them immigrants from Europe, institutionalized irreligion. </p> <p>Within Bohemian (Czech) Pilsen, on the city's Southwest Side, the irreligious might have outnumbered the religious six to one, and they built an elaborate social network. The Congregation of Bohemian Freethinkers of Chicago, <em>Svobodna obec Chicagu,</em> founded in 1870, became a central community institution. That congregation published the largest Czech-language newspaper in the city. These freethinkers set up building and benevolent societies, maintained a school and a library, organized children's programs and adult lectures, and sponsored musical and dramatic programs. Their congregation offered secular baptisms for their children and secular funerals, in the Bohemian National Cemetery, for their dead. </p> <p>The Scandinavian Freethinker's Society, <em>Skandinavisk Fritænkere Forening,</em> founded in 1869, commemorated Tom Paine's birthday throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Native-born freethinkers formed the Liberal League in 1880; its members joined the Scandinavians as they celebrated Paine and his <em>Age of Reason.</em> Free thought appeared even within Polonia, where the irreligious formed a society in the late 1880s and issued their own newspapers in the 1890s. </p> <p>Free thought became disreputable in the minds of native-born elites, as it increasingly attracted a working-class audience after 1875. By the end of the century, free thinkers were becoming socialists, and institutionalized free thought barely survived into the twentieth century. </p> <p>Bruce C. Nelson</p><p> </p><p>1905: </p><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Bohemian Congregation of Free Thinkers (First)</font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica" size="2">400 W. 18th</font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Pres & Minister, F.B. Zdrubek</font> <p align="CENTER"><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Bohemian Congregation of Free Thinkers (First)</font> </p>