The Earliest Filipeks
The earliest known Filipek ancestor of my gg-grandfather Antonín Filipek was Regina Filipekova born sometime in the 1500s. In 1577, she was a widow when she became the owner of what is now known as the Filipek Farm. The Filipek Farm is located in Kolence, a very small town in what was then southern Bohemia. Regina kept the farm for 13 years and then passed it to her daughter Barbora (Barbara) and her husband Matej Prokes who became Matej Prokes-Filipek upon his marriage and becoming the farmer of the Filipek Farm. This change of surname of the male to assume the name of the farm was very common in Bohemia and offspring of Matej and Barbora would be Filipeks and not Prokes. The farm was passed down 11 times through the generations from Regina, the original owner, to Antonín Filipek who became the twelfth owner in 1849. The passage of the farm was sometimes to sons and sometimes to daughters and sometimes to previous owner's sons or daughters. Besides Matej Prokes, there were four other cases where men married Filipek woman and then assumed the Filipek name. Although there were all these name changes, Antonín Filipek and all his offspring can trace their genealogy back to Regina Filipekova. However, even though they have the same surname, this is not a linkage back of 10 generations of fathers.

A complete listing of the owners and farmers of the Filipek Farm from Regina Filipekova to the present is listed in the Four Hundred Years of Filipek Farm Ownership Page. Miroslav Kandl, a great-grandson of Antonín Filipek, now owns the farm.

Bohemia and Kolence
Kolence is a small town consisting of a number of farms in what is now Czech Republic. The Czech Republic consists of two old provinces Bohemia and Moravia. Prague was in Bohemia and Bohemia is to the west of Moravia.

The name Bohemia goes back to Roman and Celtic times. The Latin Boihaemum means "home of the Boii", and "boii" is Celtic for "fighter" for the people that originally inhabited the region. I'm not sure how far back the Kingdom of Bohemia existed, but the King of Bohemia was explicitly mentioned in the Papal Bull of 1356 as one of the original princes named to elect the Holy Roman Emperor. Back in 1560 and for several centuries the Austrian Hapsburgs generally controlled the Kingdom of Bohemia. There was one very rough period around 1630 during the 30 Year War in Europe when the Catholic and Protestant wars were going in Bohemia, that Bohemia lost about 75% of its population Generally throughout this period the places we know as countries were Kingdoms, Duchies, Electorates, and Counties. Based on who was winning at the time, they would be over-laid by various Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire, the Napoleanic Empire, or the German Empire. The empires would provide centralized governmental control while still letting the various leaders continue to function in their Kingdoms, Duchy's and so on. For the most part, the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Empire controlled Bohemia throughout the period up to World War I. At the end of World War I the country of Czechoslovakia was created from Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. After the Russians moved out of Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s, the people of Czechoslovakia chose to split into two countries, one being the Czech Republic.

So from the beginnings of the Filipek Farm in the 1577, there have been many national influences and empire swings back and forth over the land including the Austrians, the Germans, and the Russians. Since most of the time our Filipeks were in Kolence, it was called Bohemia and our story will thus refer to our ancestors as being from Bohemia rather than Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic. However, it is useful to note that the language they spoke was Czech, which predates the establishment of the name of the country by over a millennium.

Kolence is about 70 miles southeast of Prague and about 20 miles northwest of the border crossing to Austrian at Ceske Velenice. Ceske translates to Czech so Ceske Velenice means the Czech Velenice. This was done to differentiate from similarly named towns in other areas such as Moravia. Kolence is located on Route 148 and the various farms have numbers. The Filipek Farm is No. 16. Down the road is the former Sokolik Farm, which is Farm No. 9. Nearby towns to Kolence are Lomnice nad Luznici which is about three miles to the west and Novosedly which is about 1.5 miles to the east. Note the "ice" sound is pronounced phonetically as "itz".

Because there are really no large towns around and the marriage choices limited there are a number of close cousin marriages in our history. These are pretty typical of small farming communities whether there or anywhere. In fact given the Filipeks were there for hundreds of years there are many marital connections between the same families.

I am uncertain of the translation of the name Filipek but in Czech it is written as Filípek. Daughters until they were married added the suffix "ova" as in Filípekova, which means "daughter of Filípek". Generally one finds that Bohemian names end in "ak, "ek", or "ik", thus the "root" word is most likely "Filip", which may well be the equivalent of the English "Phillip" and the ending "ek" could be "son of". However, at this point, I am only guessing.

Antonín and Katerina Filípek Family
The focal point of our story is Antonín Filípek and his wife Katerina Ceckova. Antonín and Katerina are my gg-grandparents. They are also Ted Curtis and Terry Nelson's gg-grandparents, Cindy Filipek Johnson's ggg-grandparents, and Vladmir Kandl's great-grandparents.

Antonín Filípek
Antonín Filípek was born on March 25, 1815 at the Filípek Family Farm at No. 16, Kolence, Bohemia. His parents were Vojtech (Albert) Filípek and Anna Kotek, and Vojtech's father was Tomas Filípek. It is believed Antonín had three brothers and five sisters and it is presumed he was baptized at St. James' Church in Novosedly.

Katerina Ceckova
Katerina Ceckova was born April 5, 1833 at No. 13 Zablati in the Parish of Lomnice. Her father was Tomas Cecka who was the farmer at No. 13. Tomas' father was Pavel Cecka and his mother was Katerina Blazek from Dynin Number 6. I have not yet found Zablati on a map but if the Parish of Lomnice includes Lomnice nad Luznici, then Katerina Ceckova lived about 3 miles west of Kolence on Route 148, certainly fairly close to her future husband. I have not found Dynin on a map. For those interested in locating Czech places on a map, see the Town Locator link in our Links section.

Katerina's mother was Anna Ciganek who was the daughter of Matej Ciganek alias Marek, the farmer at Number 8 Lhota, and Katerina nee Martinek from Becice. Both Matej and Katerina Ciganek had passed on by the time of Katerina's birth in 1833. The term "alias Marek" most likely occurred because of the purchase of a farm with Matej taking on a new surname. What is unclear is whether his original surname was Ciganek or Marek. My guess is that it was Marek and he took on the Ciganek name since the daughters surname was Ciganek. I have not found Lhota or Becice on a map.

Their Marriage and Children
Antonín and Katerina were married on October 9, 1849. Their children are Mary born August 30th, 1850; Anna born January 17th, 1853; Frantisek born August 5, 1854; Jan born July 15, 1856; Katerina born July 15, 1858; Rosalie born September 13, 1860; Terezie born September 24, 1862; and Vaclav born September 10, 1863. It is thought that all were born on Farm No. 16, Kolence and all baptized at St. James in Novosedly. Daughter, Terezie, died in infancy.

At the time of her marriage, Katerina was 16 while Antonín would have been 34, 18 years her senior. A relatively large age difference shows up a number of times in our research suggesting that it may have been a custom or an expectation that the male established his livelihood first. Another example is Frank Sokolik's marriage to Anna Filipek; Frank was 20 years older.

Antonín and the Filipek Farm
Antonín became the owner of the farm in 1849, which he obtained from his father Vojtech who had owned the farm since 1804. Vladimir Kandl's research discovered the following: