calmar depot On June 3, 1893, ten people, including the world-famous composer Antonin Dvorak, his wife and six children, set out for Spillville by train. Dvorak had been living in New York. He was born in a small village 45 miles north of Prague in 1841. By the time he became the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, he had already achieved world fame. While in New York, Dvorak wrote his famous symphony From the New World. The symphony was composed between January 10th and May 24th 1893. The music is an expression of the agitating effect of life in a new environment.

Dvorak desperately wanted to return to Bohemia. But his busy schedule would not allow such a long voyage so he decided to spend the summer of 1893 in the Czech community of Spillville.

"I shall look upon the faces of my dear and long-missed children. Then we shall go straight to Chicago, have a look at the Exhibition, and then set out for our summer Vysoka in the state of Iowa, for the Czech village of Spillvile where the teacher and the parish priest and everything is Czech and so I shall be among my own folks and am looking forward to it very much."
"I shall have pigeons there and maybe even play darda. How grand it will be. The priest has two pairs of ponies and we shall ride to Protivin, a little town near Spillville. Here in America there are names of towns and villages of all nations under the sun!"

"The state of Iowa to which we are going is 1300 miles from New York but here such a distance is nothing. Thirty-six hours by express and we are there."

On Monday, June 5, around 10 a.m., they reached their last stop. They were greeted by the Rev. Tomas Bily of Spillville at the Calmar train depot. A carriage took them the last five miles to Spillville. Father Bily had secured lodging with a German, Mr. Schmidt. The house consisted of eight rooms. Dvorak and his family occupied the top floor.

Dvorak was inspired by nature. His music reflected the call of birds or the gentle flowing of a stream. He would get up at four o'clock in the morning for a solitary walk along the Little Turkey river. Of his walks, he says...

"Nothing happened-and yet a great deal. Imagine, I was walking there in the woods along by the stream and after eight months I heard again the signing of birds! And here the birds are different from ours, they have much brighter colours and they sing differently, too."
He usually returned by five. By seven, he was sitting at the organ located just above the entrance to St. Wenceslaus church. Almost every afternoon he spent in the company of some of the older settlers. They told him of their bitter and difficult beginnings in America. While in Spillville, Dvorak wrote F major string quartet, op96 and E flat major string quintet, op97. Both works reflect a mood of happy contentment.

On Friday, September 15, 1893, a day before leaving Spillville, Dvorak writes to his friend Dr. Kozanek.
"The three months spent here in Spillville will remain a happy memory for the rest of our lives. We enjoyed being here and were very happy, though we found the three months of heat rather trying. It was made up to us, however, by being among our own people, our Czech countrymen, and that gave us great joy. If it had not been for that, we should not have come here at all. Spillville is a purely Czech settlement, founded by a certain Bavarian, German, Spielmann, who christened the place Spillville. He died four years ago, and in the morning when I went to church, my way took me past his grave and strange thoughts always fill my mind at the sight of it as of the graves of many other Czech countrymen who sleep their last sleep here."

"It is very strange here. Few people and a great deal of empty space. A farmer's nearest neighbor is often 4 miles off, especially in the prairies (I call them the Sahara) there are only endless acres of field and meadow and that is all you see. You don't meet a soul (here they only ride on horseback) and you are glad to see in the woods and meadows the huge herds of cattle which, summer and winter, are out at pasture in the broad fields. Men go to the woods and meadows where the cows graze to milk them. And so it is very wild here and sometimes very sad -- sad to despair."

"I am very well off here, God be praised, I am in good health and am working well and I know that, as for my new Symphony -- the F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville) - I should never have written these works just so if I hadn't seen America."
Dvorak only spent the summer of 1893 in Spillville. He died in 1904. A memorial now sits in Riverside park where the composer strolled in the early morning hours. Fifty years after his visit, on July 1, 1943, The Decorah Journal ran an article announcing the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Rosa and Mathias Kinkor. The article states that Dvorak played the wedding march during their wedding held on June 27, 1893, in St. Wenceslaus church. The Rev. Thomas Bily presided. Dvorak was interested in comparing the weddings in this country to those of the old country. He not only played at the wedding but attended the reception as well!

The house where Dvorak stayed is now a museum for the famous Bily brothers clocks. The upstairs portion currently houses a Dvorak museum.


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