All Soul's Day, 2024
The
Mysterious Death
of Anton Janyska
My investigation into the numerous tragedies in the life (and death) of Anton Janyska developed while engaged in a survey I have undertaken out at my maternal family’s 140 y.o. Texas Historic Cemetery.
In an old section of this cemetery – a section that, to my knowledge, has never been properly recorded in this manner -- I have been moving a metal folding chair from one headstone to the next and carefully recording the inscriptions on them.
Of the 64 headstones found in this section, the majority of the inscriptions are in Czech and majority of those buried here were born in the mid- to late 19th century (1800s).
 |
| The translations of these Czech inscriptions have been quite challenging. |
Czech language accents are vitally important to arrive at an accurate translation so every letter's tiny accent mark had to be hunted on, in most cases, very deteriorated stones. I had to use a small pick and cleanser to get the collected moss away and it was a challenge --
"Oh, wait, is that an accent there? or, just a scar? Sigh…”
The occupants interred here include quite a few who came from the region of Moravia that my own maternal great-great-great grandparents came from. My great-great-great grandparent's monument is located in another section of the cemetery.
Sadly, here in this section also is interred nearly 20 infants and young children, reflecting the high infant mortality rate of this period –
 |
| Among the dead infants here are our two little lambs, the Krapola twins, who died separately at 4 months and 5 months |
at least three of
the children were born in Moravia, but died here in Texas.
In total, I've recorded 64 monuments / headstones of identified individual’s plots along with 11 markers of Unknown individuals that are scattered throughout the 20 rows in this section (each row with 20 plots)
-- meaning, if interested, we have over 300 plots available here for you yourself to choose from!
We’d love to have you!
______________
What led initially to my great interest in Anton’s
headstone?
Multiple factors:
- · I was struck by the fact that this century-old
white marble headstone was still so pristine.
Other headstones and tall monuments this old and of this material had long turned dark, their inscriptions obscured by moss or grime.
- · I was ashamed that this was a veteran I had
annually missed!
Each year in the week before Memorial Day I go out to our family cemetery and plant ground flags beside the headstone of every known veteran that my elders have acquainted me with. How is it no one ever mentioned this World War I veteran to me before, and how is it I’ve frequently mowed the lawn in this section and never noticed. I was ashamed and I made a pledge then and there to never again forget our WWI Veteran, Anton Janyska.
And then came the observation that really drew my attention
here –
- · a 4 ft. pillar beside him for a 2 month old child named
Vlasta Janyska.
Vlasta was my maternal grandmother’s name and I believe that's what first caught my attention here.
Was this Anton’s daughter?
Noticing the dates on both headstones – and, being familiar with the dates of The Great War, -- I asked myself
Isn’t the immediate timing of Anton's enlistment in relation to his child’s date of death strange?
Why is there no wife buried beside Anton?
And why would the mother of this child be buried in a location other than beside this child she bore?
Already so many questions were churning.
Little did I know how many more questions
were to come! It was as if Anton was
leading me, one question at a time he was revealing his life to me, making
certain I could never again forget the name Anton Janyska.
__________
ANTON'S EARLY LIFE
Anton was born April 20, 1893, 70 years before my own birth on April 15.
His father was also named
Anton Janyska, the name of his mother unknown.
 |
| The Czech dream of having their own nation would be fulfilled following Austria's defeat in The Great War that Anton Janyska signed up to fight in. Following the war, the Treaty of Versailes led to the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1920. |
In the “Where were you born?” section of his U.S. Army military registration card in 1917 Anton provides us with:
Today, Janka has
been consumed by the city of Brno (the second largest city in Czechia). Perhaps
the only reminder of Janka’s former location is a pensione, a place of lodging
for backpackers, the Penzion Janka.
 |
| Brno's main railway station, built in 1838, was one of the first railway stations in the world. From this station Anton Janyska would depart for Breman, Germany to board a ship to America. |
What do we know was occurring in his homeland at this time?
It is most likely that Anton was bi-lingual – speaking both
German and Czech. Brno in 1900 had a
predominantly German-speaking population (63%), as opposed to the
suburbs, which were predominantly Czech-speaking. Life in the city was
therefore bilingual, and what was called in German "Brünnerisch" was
a mixed idiom containing elements from both languages.
Brno in the 1880s and 1890s was known for its intellectual and academic centers. Gregor Mendel, an Austrian-Czech biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno was conducting his groundbreaking experiments in genetics and publishing his findings in the 1880s to great acclaim.
The city center was predominantly Catholic,
there was a Jewish ghetto (much like that of Prague’s renowned Jewish ghetto),
but in the rural suburbs and countryside – despite Austrian repression - a
Protestant faith that had evolved from the 15th century Hussite
movement was prevalent.
1900-1905 saw the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy on the defensive, fighting against the stubborn actions of the ethnic Czechs and the persistent Slavic people’s drive for political and national equality.
Austrian Prime Minister Taaffe was growing increasingly frustrated with the Czechs within the empire and Czechs increasingly angered by the suppression of their language and culture. Taaffe thought he had made progress by including more Slavic representation in the parliament.
Taaffe's great achievement was that he persuaded the Czechs to abandon their long policy of abstention from civic participation (their abstention rooted in their anger over their culture's suppression by the Hapsburg rulers) and to finally begin taking part in the parliament. It was on the support of them and the minority Poles that his majority rule and political power depended.
His avowed intention was to unite the multiple nationalities of Austria: "Germans and Slavs were," as he said, "equally integral parts of Austria.” An idea that did not sit well with conservative Germans set on maintaining the purity of German blood!
However, the new Slavic orientation of the Taaffe cabinet did not satisfy the Czechs, but rather encouraged a mood of belligerence; because the more moderate Old Czechs failed to live up to radical demands of the nationalistic Young Czechs who were able to gain support from the Bohemian and Moravian electorate.
In 1890 Taaffe tried to negotiate an agreement between the Old Czechs and the German liberals, whereby Bohemia would be divided for administrative and judicial purposes along lines of nationality, he was attacked by the more chauvinistic Young Czechs and German nationalists, and his authoritarian efforts to implement the administrative divisions led to violent riots in Prague in 1893 and again in 1899.
 |
| Prague's famous picturesque Charles Bridge, 1900. As the only means of crossing the river Vltava until 1841, the medieval structure, Karlov Most [Charles Bridge] was the most important connection between Prague Castle (seen above in forefront of St. Vitus Cathedral) and the city's Old Town. A year before this photo was taken the bridge was the scene of great bloodshed in the Prague Riots. |
It was in the midst of this political turmoil within his own countrymen and these violent riots that Anton Janyska was born into the Czech world in April of 1893.
What was happening in Anton’s world as he was growing up?
- · There were intense divisions within the Czech provinces
between left-leaning Christian Socialists and the moderates and conservatives
regarding the future of the Czech ethnic population living in the oppressive Austrian
empire;
- · Anton’s Protestant upbringing would find him in
churches where religious leaders were denouncing “the State” (the Hapsburg dynasty's Austrian
Empire) for being a puppet of the Catholic Papacy, a “modern Babylon” that was suppressing
Czechs into submission and he would be listening to sermons about a hoped for
future liberation and escape from this oppression;
- · There were escalating tensions in the Balkans stoking
rumors of impending war;
- · Despair in Russia that would culminate in the
Russian Revolution of 1905;
- · and extreme drought conditions and economic hardship in the rural Czech regions where Anton lived also defined the 1900-1905 period.
Out of this world departed 13 y.o. Anton Janyska
on a ship
heading for Galveston Texas –
some foreign destination in the United States
of America.
__________
ARRIVAL IN GALVESTON, then Granger in 1906
We know not who he arrived with or the circumstances leading
to Anton’s departure from Moravia.
The first major Czech immigration wave first occurred in 1848 when the Bohemian
"Forty Eighters" fled to the United States to escape political
persecution by the Hapsburgs. By the late 1850s there were an estimated 10,000
Bohemians living in the United States. Chicago, tied to the West by rail and
more readily accessible to immigrants, became the most populous Bohemian
settlement. By 1870, other cities with Bohemian concentrations included St.
Louis, Cleveland, New York, and Milwaukee.
Another large wave of Bohemian migration to America – this time especially
into the Port of Galveston - occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when
Midwestern farmland was widely available at low prices. Coming from both Bohemia
and Moravia, they were collectively called "Bohemians" in the early part of the
20th century.
Most Bohemian immigrants made the journey to the United
States with their families. This marks a contrast with the immigration patterns
of other ethnic groups, such as the Germans, English, Poles, and Slovaks, who
tended to come over individually. Moreover, it was not uncommon in large
families for the head of the household to make more than one trip to the United
States, bringing along one or more children each time. Many of those who
immigrated in the late nineteenth century were of Moravian ancestry.
 |
| Male immigrants unaccompanied by other family members were often segregated upon arrival at the Port of Galveston and held on ship until families with children had been processed. |
The possibilities offered by a young United States for
acquiring free land became an attractive, though risky, alternative to
the lack of opportunities in rural Central Europe. For many boys and young men,
it offered a way-out of serving in the Imperial army.
One finds on the Port of Galveston Immigration database that a 13 y.o. Anton Januska arrived in June of 1906 after having left the Port of Bremen, Germany in April.
 |
| Port of Galveston's Immigration Center & Quarantine Depot Anton arrived here 6 years after Galveston’s devastation by The Great Storm, a hurricane now considered the worst natural disaster ever recorded in North America. It hit Galveston on September 8, 1900. Few managed to evacuate before the bridges to the mainland collapsed, resulting in the loss of more than 6,000 lives. |
The Port of Galveston, Texas was a major point of entry for immigrants to the United States from the 1840s to the 1920s. Before Ellis Island opened in 1892, hundreds of thousands of immigrants passed through Galveston. Between 1906 and 1914, nearly 50,000 immigrants arrived at Galveston, including people from many countries, including: Bohemians, Moravians, Galicians, Australians, Romanians, Swiss, English, Poles, Italians, and Dutch.
As with many Czech immigrants, Anton would wind up in
central Texas – in fact, Williamson County where multiple Czech-filled towns
were to be found. The place he landed –
Granger – was a booming and bustling cotton capital of the region. Here, Anton
Janyska stepped off the platform of the Granger Depot into his new home.
 |
| Granger Train Depot, ca. 1900. This photograph is part of the collection entitled Are We There Yet? Transportation in Central Texas and was provided by the Williamson Museum to The Portal to Texas History, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries. |
WORK & SOCIAL LIFE in Granger
Anton soon became a part of the Czech institutions in Granger – the social activities sponsored by a Czech fraternal lodge and the Czech protestant church -- and he secured employment in the meat market on “the Czech side of Granger.”
 |
| The C.S.P.S., a Czech fraternal organization in Granger, was predecessor to the S.P.J.S.T. (which still exists today). I feel strongly that an 18 yo. Anton Janyska could be present in this photo taken in 1911. |
For those not
familiar, the Czech side of Granger in Anton's day was the west side of the railroad tracks, the Amerikany
were on the east side. Each side had its
own churches (the Czech Brethren and Catholic church that was named after the two
Slavic saints Cyril & Methodius were on the Czech side, the Baptists and Methodists
on the Amerikany side); Granger National Bank was on the Czech side, another
bank served the Amerikany side. The
Amerikany side had an impressive Opera House; the Czechs had their boisterous
fraternal lodge.
Czech Protestant immigrants had began settling in the Williamson County area in
the early 1880s. Many of them established family farms in the rich farmland
surrounding Granger, including my own maternal patriarch and matriarch – Pavel and
Rozina (Trlica) Machu – who began a family cemetery on their farm -- yes, the cemetery in which I now study Anton
Janyska’s headstone.
The Czech Protestant’s first organized worship service was
held in a schoolhouse east of town in the early 1880s. That “Moravian School” was Pavel Machu’s
gift to his Czech community – he raised the funds, provided 3 acres of his own land
for its construction, and defended its purpose as a place of learning for “the
Czech children who found small welcome in the city school’s classrooms.”
 |
| Moravia School opened in 1884 near the Machu family compound east of Granger Texas. Moravia School became Texas Common School District No. 83 in 1903. It served the dispersed farming settlement of Czechs in Granger and was a focal point for social and religious gatherings. In 1922, trustees enlarged the schoolhouse to two rooms, providing space for grades one through eight. Older students attended high school in Granger, suffering through the “Bohemian” name calling, and chastisements from teachers anytime they spoke Czech instead of English. Many of my maternal family kin are pictured in this photo. |
The Czech Protestants held their early worship services in
the Moravia School sporadically whenever a traveling Czech minister was available to
preach. The Rev. Adolph Chlumsky, a Czech Brethren minister from Brenham,
encouraged the people here to organize a church. On July 10, 1892, they
officially founded a congregation and elected Chlumsky pastor. He commuted from
Brenham to serve the congregation for the next 18 years. The congregation built
its first church structure in 1901. On December 29, 1903, under the leadership
of the Rev. Mr. Chlumsky, the Evangelical Unity of the Czech-Moravian Brethren
in North America (Unity of the Brethren) denomination officially was organized
at Granger Brethren Church. At its peak in
about 1970 the denomination had about 30 churches scattered throughout Texas.
Three years later, upon his arrival in Granger in 1906, the teen Anton Janyska would integrate with these Czech Protestants in the Brethren Church.
He soon found work in a meat market. Apparently he performed well here. In the space provided for the question “What
is your trade, occupation?” on the military service registration card that he
filled out in 1917 he states “Butcher.”
And on that registration card in 1917 his answer to the question “By whom employed?” he states that he is half owner of the City Meat Market in Granger, Texas. Impressive elevation for a lad who'd only arrived in this country 11 years earlier.
 |
| 1905 photo of my Machu ancestor's grocery store on the "Czech side" of Granger. Beside the grocery store, visible through tree limbs, is the Meat Market where Anton Janyska would find employment upon arrival and, at some point, become half owner. |
MARRIAGE & my connection to Anton Janyska
Upon his arrival in 1906 Janyska found among his Czech
brethren in this church familiar surnames from his home country as well as a familiar
menu of smoked sausages, kolaches and, of course, pivo (beer). Among those surnames here he would have
recognized from his previous home would be the name Vitek.
When my paternal grandfather, Oscar E. Loessin, passed away
in 1969 I was six and a half years old.
A year after his passing my grandmother would marry an old elementary school
chum. That man was Alfred Vitek. Into
adulthood he had remained a confirmed bachelor, annually bringing his cotton trailers
into the yard of my grandparent’s 50-year enterprise near Granger, our Loessin
Cotton Gin. While my grandfather and his
son (my future Dad) would labor in the gin, Alfred sat in the nearby family
home drinking coffee with my grandmother (or so the somewhat sordid tale is now
told with tongue in cheek).
Alfred Vitek’s aunt was Frantiska (Frances) Vitek. Frantiska
Vitek was born on 11 July 1893 in Granger. Her
father, Martin Vitek, was 28 and her mother, Johanna Krupala, was 37. Their eldest, son August, was Alfred’s
father.
Two month’s before her 21st birthday, Frantiska
Vitek would marry Anton Janyska on May 5, 1914 in a service officiated by the
Rev. Josef Barton, pastor of the “Evangelical Union of the Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren of North America at Granger Tex.”
_________
CHILDREN
One year and seven months later the couple produced their first child. November 25, 1915 is the date of birth on the
headstone for Vlasta Bozena, ditka (daughter) z (of) Anton A Frantiska Janyska.
January 28, 1916, two months later, the child died.
The top of the child’s white marble pillar is missing an oval image and below it is inscribed in Czech, “Zde odpociva nas milocek” [Our sweetheart rests here].
Czech Inscription on base, “Nechte ditek jiti Kem ne, u nebrante jsm nebo takvycht jest kralovstvi Bozi. Marek 10:14” [Let the children come, for the kingdom of God belongs to them. Mark 10:14]
A year later, January 12, 1917, 23 y. o. Frantiska (Frances)
gave birth to her and Anton’s second daughter - Hermine Eliska Janyska. Hermine would marry a man her same age named William
Butts. I could find no children recorded
for the two. She died at 82 and is
buried in Cook Walden Cemetery in Austin TX.
Butts lived another 14 years before joining her there.
___________
TRAGIC TWO YEARS
After welcoming a new daughter five months ago, Anton Janyska on June 5, 1917 completes a Military Service registration card. Here he notes he is married and is parent of one child. Interestingly as well, for Race - he writes "Bohemian"!
Six months after giving birth to her second daughter,
one month after husband has registered for army enlistment,
on
July 11, 1917, Frantiska Vitek dies.
She died on her own birthday at age 24.
How did Frantiska die? Had there been complications in the delivery of the second child?
She would be buried in the Granger Brethren Church cemetery
-- not in our family’s Machu Cemetery where her 2 m.o. daughter had been buried
a mere one year and six months prior.
The top inscription reads, "Zde v Panu odpociva," a Czech phrase to be found on many headstones of this period meaning she "rests here in the Lord."
The bottom Czech inscription I have not been able to decipher:
I certainly would love some help from anyone on this one!
But what I'd really love help understanding
is this:
Why was she not buried alongside her child she bore only a year earlier?
_________
Anton Janyska's entry into The Great War’s military
service (reflected on his headstone) was immediate, leaving for
army training at Camp Travis in San Antonio, Texas only 1 month after his
wife Frances died.
What mental state was Anton in as he left for his
military training, having buried both a child and his wife within the past
year?
It is hard for me to imagine that these traumas did not
plague his mind as he arrived at Camp Travis that summer, or as he boarded the
ship in the Fall headed to the notorious trenches in France.
Would the intensely challenging,
physically grueling training serve as his “escape” from the recent
traumas?
Was the loss of his first child
behind his decision to sign up?
Or was his own Czech
nationalist spirit the motivation?
And what of 6-month old Hermine -- who would now raise this child?
That question has an answer.
Her mother’s family, the Vitek family.
A Cook in the 360 INF. 90 DIV.
The 90th Infantry Division ("Tough 'Ombres") was a
unit of the United States Army that served in World War I and World War II. Its
lineage is carried on by the 90th Sustainment Brigade. The Division’s 360th
Infantry was one of those regiments formed in the Fall of 1917 in answer to
President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a greater army.
 |
| WWI U.S. Army 90th Division - the Texas "Tough Ombres" - shoulder patch |
 |
| The 360th Infantry Band Camp Travis, S.A. Tex. |
The training site was Camp Travis, San Antonio, Texas.
Because the men for the 90th Division were to be drawn from two states – Texas
and Oklahoma – it was decided to have a Texas brigade and an Oklahoma brigade.
The 180th became the Texas organization and thousands of the best youths in the
Lone Star state were soon on its rolls.
They came from the shops and offices of the larger cities,
from the colleges and universities of the state’s quieter centers – including
Texas A&M, and from the farm and cattle country – including many rural
Texas Czechs (like Charles Janicek of Ennis and Anton Janyska of Granger)
wanting to join the fight in Europe the Czech people there had joined with the
Allies. They answered the call with a single mind – “to fight in the great
cause of human liberty until that cause should be succored” – as the military
stated it. But for the Texas Czechs
another reason, fulfilling the nationalist dream of Czechs to acquire their own
nation following this war.
As stated in the official U.S. Army narrative about the 360th
Infantry Brigade, “the training was no more nor no less than nearly every other
organization which came overseas underwent while in the States. The days were
long and the discipline stiff.”
The great word to start for France came late in May 1918.
The oldest enlisted men in the regiment had barely completed their first nine
months in the army when the movement eastward started. The regiment reached
Camp Mills, New York, June 12. The
organization sailed June 14th. Landing was made at Southampton, England, June
21, and the next night the channel was bridged by transports carrying the 360th
to France. By easy stages the organization moved to the area near Rouvres sur
Aube, where intensive training was started behind the bulging battleline. This
training was completed on August 20, 1918, and the regiment pronounced fit and
ready for its portion of field service.
In late August, Anton Janyska’s 90th Division entered the
front lines,
- · participating in the Battle of St. Mihiel
in September, 1918
 |
| Columns of German prisoners taken by the Americans' 90th Division in the first day of the assault on the St. Mihiel salient, marching in the rain toward the prison pens prepared for them at nearby Ansauville, France. In this long prisoner march, was Anton made to cook for the Germans as well? |
- · and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive
in October-November 1918.
 |
| The Meuse-Argonne battle is still disputed today as to whether it was military disaster for the U.S. Army - led by foolish military leadership - or, was it a necessary step toward arriving at Armistice? |
 |
| 90th Div. Infantry in the trenches at Meuse-Argonne, 1918. |
The Meuse–Argonne offensive was a major part of
the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire
Western Front. It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the signing of the
Armistice on November 11, 1918 – a total of 47 days of endless, horrifying conflict.
The Meuse–Argonne offensive was the largest in United States military history,
involving 1.2 million French, Siamese, and American soldiers, sailors and
marines. It is also the deadliest campaign in the history of the United States
Army.
In total, in its four months of combat in France, the 90th Division suffered 7,549 casualties (1,091 killed in action and 6,458 wounded in action).
From December 1918 to May 1919, the division was stationed near Trier, Germany, as part of the Army of Occupation. Was it during this duty that Cook Anton Janyska was wounded, or had he been wounded earlier in the intense fighting at Meuse-Argonne?
In its weekly report of Texas Casualties, the Monday, January 27, 1919 edition of the Austin American newspaper listed the Cook Anton Janyska as "Wounded, Degree Undetermined." But these reports were generally slow in arriving back home so it is uncertain exactly when he was wounded.
 |
| Wounded, Degree Undetermined. Cook Anton Janyska, Granger. Austin American, reporting on "Texas Casualties" January 27, 1919. |
The 90th Division would arrive back at the port of Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the SS Magnolia on 7 June 1919 after 12 months of overseas service
and was demobilized on 17 June 1919 at Camp Bowie, Texas.
____________
Anton’s Return to Granger Short-Lived
After enduring the horrors of war on the European front in
France, 8 months later, back home in Granger, Anton Janyska was dead.
It appears he was shot by someone in Granger!
I am unable to make out the last name of the man named Albin
who “held the pistol” that killed Anton Janyska.
Who was this shooter named Albin?
Why did he shoot Anton so soon after Anton returned from
The Great War?
Why is the cause of death stated so oddly, “caused by
a shot from a pistol in the hands of…”
Was it an accidental shooting?
Did Anton ask Albin to fire the pistol? Was it a mercy killing of a man suffering from severe physical wounds, the pain of which he could not longer bear?
or suffering from “shell shock” [as they termed PTSD back
then]?
Or, was it murder?
The story of Anton Janyska is certainly a tragedy.
Consider his short life:
he traveled from Europe to America in a search of prosperity, happiness, and freedom from
oppression;
instead, he experiences the great losses of a wife and a child;
sailing back to Europe to fight in a war for his countrymen he
witnesses the carnage of the worst battle in the history of the U.S. Army;
yet, surviving that episode,
he returns to Texas only to meet a mysterious end at 10 p.m. on
February 25th, 1920 at age 26.
I tell the story of Anton Janyska on this All Soul’s Day, 2024 because I’ve made a silent promise to him –
to remember him and little Vlasta beside him.
And now, you know of them as well.
_________
 |
| I love reading either mysteries or historical fiction. I also love writing poetry and working on my novels - hope you enjoy the excerpts! |
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