What is a Swehla/Svehla?
Bullheaded
Welcome to the Swehla/Svehla family. There's always room for one more, here! I have something special for you if you
stick around. I'll introduce you to brothers, mothers, cousins,daughters, sisters, aunts, uncles, sons, fathers and hero's.
I have collected not to mention, husbands and wives past and present, willing and unwilling!! There may even be gender and
race not quite indentified yet!
This story will have no ending, and it has no beginning, so we are stuck right in the middle. So it will be there that
I begin my written account, alittle before we came in, at the end of the beginning of the middle.
The first person to put their memories on paper was Frantisek Joseph Svehla b.1845. Son of Frantisek Josef and Alzbeta
Moudra Svehla. As he said, the best memory is fact recorded. Black and White "Cerne na Bilem".
He wrote about his life in the old country as a child after the death of his mother and the ocean voyage that
bought them to this place called Spillville, Iowa.
The story begins in a time that seems unreal to us, early nineteeth century...1850's. The place Southern Bohemian town
called Albrechtice, two cousins Frantisek Josef and Frantisek Svehla. To avoid confusion between the two cousins, I will
refer to Frantisek as Frank.
