Chart | Passenger | Marriage | Death| Census

Daughter of Joseph Bosek √
Wife of John Dvorak √

Facts (with source information): Narrative Report

Chart

1872 Passenger on the Berlin

The ship Berlin from Bremen arrived in Baltimore.

1872 Passenger List

Boschek family are numbers 237-245. Filamena is number 240.

1885 Marriage

St. John Nepomuk, St. Louis, Missouri
third entry (both right and left pages)
The diacritical marks indicate that Czech was spoken in this church. And in these records, only the fathers of brides and grooms are named. Their mothers are not mentioned. And all the witnesses of the weddings are men.
(film 007856975, image 488)

1941 Death

St. Louis, Missouri
Another proof that she was Joseph Bosek’s daughter. Sadly, her mother is unknown. The informant was her daughter, Philomena Dvorak Spies (known as Minnie).

1941 Burial

St. Anthony of Padua, St. Louis, Missouri
entry 3
It was unusual for a practicing Catholic to be buried in a non-Catholic cemetery. And it would have been even more unusual for the church to have held a funeral Mass for a person who was buried in non-consecrated ground. But her husband had been buried in Park Lawn Cemetery, and as you can see, she was also buried there after having had a church funeral.
(film 008132896, image 912)

Census Records

The 1890 census was lost in a fire

1880 Census

This is the earliest census record that mentions her family. You can see the diacritical marks on names, which probably means that the census taker could speak Czech. Notice the many lines on which people are said to have been born in Bohemia. This St. Louis neighborhood surrounding St. John Nepomuk Church was known as Bohemian Hill.
lines 10-17

1900 Census, page 1

Oh, dear, what a mess this census-taker made. It is the Dvorak problem. They were in St. Louis over thirty years before their name was spelled correctly in a census record. I assure you that this “Dvore” family is John Dvorak’s family. And Minna is his wife Philomena. They lived all their lives at 4419 Minnesota Avenue.
lines 95-100

1900 Census, page 2

lines 1-2

1910 Census

Their name is spelled correctly. It is Dvorak. They’ve been married 22 years, had 11 children, and one child has died.
lines 18-27

1920 Census

They still live at 4419 Minnesota Avenue. It was a very small house for such a large family. One of their granddaughters said that John Dvorak used to go to the attic to have a rest from listening to all those girls.

Philomena says she is a naturalized citizen. Because citizenship was held at lots of courts, and because there are no digitized indexes for those records, I don’t know how to find the record.
lines 86-92

1930 Census

Philomena is the head of the household. Her husband was killed in an automobile accident in 1929.

Philomena’s son John Dvorak, aged 27, is shown. Catherine Dvorak Guyot is present along with her two children, Albert Guyot and Catherine Guyot. There is a son-in-law named Jacob Swartz and a small child by the same name.
lines 3-8

1940 Census

This is the last census that shows Philomena Dvorak. She died in 1941. In this census she still lives at 4419 Minnesota Avenue. Her daughter Catherine Guyot is present along with the two Guyot children.
lines 2-5