This is the story of the Freeouf family who came to Saline County in the early 1870s, and of the forces that affected their lives. It is the story of Jan and John Freeouf, immigrant farmers. It is the story of John's son Frank Freeouf who was forced from the farm by physical and economic adversity, and who carved a new lifestyle for himself which included three terms as District 40 Representative in the Nebraska Legislature. It is the story of a promise that enabled Maynard Freeouf, Frank's son, to buy back the family farm after financial ruin caused foreclosure.
This story is dedicated to Mark and Luke Freeouf, great great great grandsons of the first generation Freeouf to make his home in America
1863
The Freeoufs in America
In 1863, 15-year-old John Freeouf came to America from Vysoke Myto, Czechoslovakia. Later in 1870, he sent for his parents, Jan and Anna Friouf, who were then in their 40’s and for his two brothers, Jim and Joe Freeouf (Stephen Freeoufs Father). Jan and Anna, with Jim and Joe, sailed April 9, 1870, from Bremen, Germany, and arrived April 24, 1870, in New York. They all joined him on a farm in Washington County, Iowa. According to the markers in Summit Cemetery, (located 4 1/2 miles west and 2 1/2 north of Wilber), the family name was first spelled Friouf.
While working as a hired man in Iowa, John Freeouf met Marie Kostecka. They were married in Iowa in 1874. Marie was the daughter of Frank and Mary (Schneaz) Kostecka of Maydalena, District Trelon, Budejovicky.
1874
The Freeoufs in Saline County
In 1874, John and Marie Freeouf and his parents, Jan and Anna Friouf, loaded their belongings into two wagons, and with their two teams, traveled across southern Iowa, crossing the Missouri River by ferry, making their way to Saline County.
Marie, who was pregnant with her first child, walked most of the way, chasing the five cows given to her by her family, the Kosteckas
John and Marie purchased an 80 acre farm, 3 miles north and 5 miles west of Wilber which had been homesteaded by F.J. Swehla. They paid $1,440, $400 down, and the rest at 10 percent interest. The 1874 taxes were $14.74.
In 1875, only one year after their move to Nebraska, John Freeouf also purchased the south 80 which had been railroad land.
When the county seat was moved from Pleasant Hill to Wilber in 1878, the courthouse records were transported by horse-drawn wagon. John Freeouf played bass horn in the band that led the moving party. Jan and John Freeouf often recalled the day that the courthouse procession traveled past School District 75. It was called Freeouf school because the land had been donated by John Freeouf.
John and Marie's first house on the Saline County farm was a small log house built by F. J. Swehla. Their first five children (Mary, Anna, Julia, Frances and Frank) were born there. Also living in the little log house with them were John's parents Jan and Anna Friouf and a hired man.
Frank Freeouf was born Feb. 12, 1884, and when he was six months old, the family moved into a new two-story frame house that still stands on the eighty. John, Henry, Jennie, Emma and Lydia Freeouf, the last five of John and Marie's 10 children, were born in this farm house.
John Freeouf's mother, Anna Friouf, died May 10, 1888. His father, Jan Friouf died December 26, 1898.
Turn of the Century the Next Generation
John Freeouf's son Frank completed eight grades at the Freeouf School and later, in the early 1900’s, attended the University of Nebraska Agriculture College at Lincoln, where farmers could take a short course to help them improve their farming methods. Frank and his two brothers, Henry and John Freeouf continued to farm the land.
John Freeouf died April 19, 1908, and his wife Marie lived with her daughters and sons in their homes until her death on July 30, 1928.
Son John Freeouf married Mary Marek and purchased a car dealership in Dorchester.
1910
Frank Freeouf Marries Phoebe Parsons
Early in 1910, Frank Freeouf bought his first car, a one-seater, one-cylinder, 10 horsepower Brush Runabout. The driver's license issued to him for February of 1910 to February of 1911, cost him $1. Frank courted Phoebe Parsons , his future wife, in that car. She and Frank met when she was teaching at the Freeouf school and Frank was serving as director. Also on the board that year were Frank G. Jelinek, treasurer and Anton Dvorak, moderator. Pupils were Stephen, Mattie, Ella and Aggie Kastanek, Albert Chihal, Fred Ladimore, Frank, and Helen Jelinek, Fred Dvorak, and Emma and Vlasta Koci.
On June 10, 1910, Frank and Phoebe were married. Phoebe Parsons was the daughter of Edward and Sara (Kerst) Parsons of Crete. She had grown up on a farm just north the present Tuxedo Park (now owned by Gene and Maggie Harding) which had been homesteaded by her grandfather Walter Parsons. Frank and Phoebe made their home in the 1884 frame house.
Frank and Phoebe Freeouf worked very hard on the farm. They added a new barn and a new silo in 1911, improved their equipment and upgraded their livestock.
Dr. Joseph Simicek of Swanton traveled to the Freeouf farm to deliver each of their five children, Maynard, Norm, Edra, Dennis and Olen Freeouf. Dr. Simicek was the brother of Frank Simicek who was married to Frank Freeouf's cousin, Mary Freeouf (daughter of Jim Freeouf). Frank and Mary (Freeouf) Simicek were the parents of Ludvik Simicek.
The years from between 1910 to 1919 were happy, ones for Frank and Phoebe who worked hard and kept busy with school events and family times that left many good memories.
Like his father John Freeouf, Frank enjoyed performing music. He played cornet and sometimes base viol in Pesek's Band for dances at the Pleasant Hill Dance Hall.
Frank enjoyed helping farmers in the area. The old crank phone on the wall of the farmhouse sometimes rang late at night as a neighbor asked Frank to help them deliver a calf or care for a sick farm animal.
1920s
Family challenged by adversity
A series of tragedies began in 1919 that had a profound effect on the family. Hog cholera killed Frank's entire herd of Poland-China purebred hogs.
In 1920, the Freeouf children all suffered with pneumonia, and there were no antibiotics. Frank's oldest son, Maynard, spent three months in the Beatrice Hospital because his lungs had to be drained. On May 10, 1921, the day before his 11th birthday, Maynard was released from the hospital, but the family's troubles were not over.
Infection from a bad carbuncle spread to Frank Freeouf's right leg, and by November of 1921, he was unable to walk. To save his life, the doctors had no choice but to amputate his entire leg. This occurred in January of 1922. Frank's brother Henry donated blood directly into Frank's body during the surgery.
Dr. Simicek pronounced Frank dead following the surgery, but the surgeon, Dr. Hepperlin, checked him again, and found him to be alive.
Good neighbors and loving relatives reached out to help the family, taking care of Frank and Phoebe's five children and doing the chores so that Phoebe could spend time in Beatrice with Frank as he recovered.
Frank recuperated for six months in the Beatrice Hospital and was an invalid at home for over a year. Frank's youngest son Olen, born in October of 1921, learned to walk along with his father--Olen on new toddler legs, and Frank on crutches.
Frank's handicap made farming difficult.
His friends--many of them made through his affiliation with the ZCBJ--encouraged him to try sales work. He sold subscriptions to the Nebraska Farmer magazine; he sold nursery stock (for Stark Bros.); he sold insurance; and he opened a small real estate office upstairs in the Old Opera House on 13th and Main in Crete. His ability to climb up and down stairs with crutches left an impression on the people who saw him. Although he had an artificial limb, he usually did not wear it.
Good friends, such as Frank Sadilek, who was also an amputee, offered Frank Freeouf support and encouragement. Freeouf and Sadilek often traveled together and spoke at Czech funerals.
Frank Freeouf: the Senator
In 1926, some of Frank’s many friends convinced him to campaign for the District 40 (Saline County) seat in the Nebraska House of Representatives. Nebraska had a two-house Legislature at that time. His main goal in serving District 40 was to make state government more efficient and thereby reduce taxes. Frank Freeouf replaced Edgar Rossiter of DeWitt.
Between 1927 and 1933, when Frank Freeouf served in the Nebraska Legislature, life in Nebraska was changing rapidly. Regulations described in Freeouf’s huge volumes of the day-to-day Nebraska House Journal (1927-1933) covered such topics as livestock inspections and sales; fish and game conservation; road building projects; trucking laws; funding and construction of the new capitol; licensing laws for bankers and barbers; examining boards for physicians, nurses, dentists, optometrists, funeral directors and veterinarians; organization of public school districts; funding of the university, county governments, public power and irrigation districts; and many other issues facing the state at the time.
Also recorded there is the Nebraska Legislature’s response to the turbulence and confusion of the 1930’s, the unemployment problem, the horrendous plight of farmers and businessmen, the farm foreclosures and bank failures.
In 1932, hundreds of Nebraska farmers marched on the State Capitol to demand that the Legislature put a moratorium on home and farm mortgage foreclosures. This was a grim and punishing time for all who lived through it.
The House Standing Committees on which Frank Freeouf served were Accounts and Expenditures; Claims and Deficiencies; Corporations, Irrigation and Drainage; Cities and Towns and State Institutions.
Although Frank Freeouf was a Democrat, he held great respect for Governor Arthur Weaver, a Republican. With conviction, Frank expressed his views and those of his constituents regarding the role of representative government in the life of the individual. Frank Freeouf saw the redistribution of wealth through the taxation and growth of government as potentially dangerous to Nebraska’s future.
In 1933, Ben H. Busboom of Crete campaigned against Frank Freeouf and won the District 40 seat in the House of Representatives.
Depression of the 1930s and foreclosure
After the stock market plunged in 1929, the Depression and economic shambles in the country caused prices to drop drastically. Frank, like many other farmers, could not make enough money farming to pay the taxes and interest that accumulated on the two eighties of land that his father and grandfather, John and Jan Freeouf, had settled on over 60 years before in 1874.
In 1937, Frank Freeouf’s oldest son, Maynard Freeouf, who had married Norma Kortman of Dorchester in 1935, Was renting and farming the V. J. Prucha farm just east of present Crete High School.
Frank Simicek of Wilber, whose wife Mary (Freeouf) Simicek was Frank Freeouf’s first cousin was forced to foreclose and take over the Freeouf farm. In the spring of 1937 Frank and Phoebe, with children Norma, Dennis and Olen, moved to the Parson’s farm, Owned by Phoebe’s parents, North of Tuxedo Park.
Norma taught at the North Ward School in Crete. Dennis Freeouf farmed the Parson land and worked for the Wielage Cattle farm. Olen was a student at Crete High School. Daughter Edra was working in Omaha.
In the spring of 1938, Maynard Freeouf’s landlord, V.J. Prucha traded farms Maynard and Norma moved to Prucha's larger farm near Wilber on Turkey Creek.
The Promise
One winter day in 1939, while Maynard Freeouf was cutting wood in the pasture near Turkey Creek, he was approached by Frank Simicek who had been forced to foreclose on Maynard's father Frank two years before. Simicek had walked all the way from Wilber to check on his farm west of of Wilber, and had then walked on north to the Prucha farm to talk to Maynard.
"Maynard, you save your money," Simicek said, "and I'll sell you the Freeouf farm back." It was a promise Maynard took to heart.
In 1945, Maynard went to Frank Simicek to ask how much he needed for the farm. They agreed on a price, a down payment, and an interest rate. Simicek also wanted the 1945 crop .
The agreement was put into writing. Eight years had since the foreclosure. Maynard and Norma Freeouf and their son Dolen Freeouf, who had been born in 1943, moved back to the family farm in 1946.
In 1984, Maynard and Norma Freeouf were presented with the AkSarBen Pioneer Farm Family Award, given annually to owners of farms which have been in the same family for 100 years or longer. It had been 110 years since John and Jan had first settled on the farm, and 39 years since Maynard Freeouf purchased the farm.
Frank died July 31, 1961 at the age of 77. He had spent months fighting cancer at the University of Nebraska Hospital in Omaha. Phoebe Freeouf died in Crete August 19, 1976 at the age of 93.
The eulogy given at Frank Freeouf's funeral paid tribute to his love of company and conversation, and called him a well read man with firm convictions which defined his character. The Jean Ingelow poem, read at Frank Freeouf's funeral, illustrates the blessings that can result from adversity, such as the Freeouf family endured during the 1920s and 1930s. Ingelow wrote "Sorrows humanize our race; Tears are the showers that fertilize this world; and memory of things precious keepeth warm the heart that once did hold them. They are poor that have lost nothing; they are poorer far, who, losing, have forgotten; they most poor of all, who lose and wish they might forget. For life is one, and in its warp and woof, there runs a thread of gold that glitters fair, and sometimes in the pattern shows more sweet where there are somber colors..."
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