Joseph L. Leshikar House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to give it its due. Way back in the mid-1800s, a preacher by the name of Rev. Josef E.

Bergman was living out in Cat Spring, Texas, and he sat down and wrote a letter. Just a letter. But what a letter it must have been, because word of it crossed an ocean.

Bergman's words praising Texas reached Czech families back home, and those families listened. Between 1851 and 1853, thirty-three Czech families packed up everything they had and immigrated to this very locality. Thirty-three families, on the strength of one letter from one preacher in Cat Spring.

You think about what that takes. The faith in a stranger's words. The courage to go.

Then, in 1854, a man named Josef L. Leshikar and his four sons built this house right here. The first home.

Four sons swinging hammers alongside their father, raising walls in a place that not long before had been nothing but promise on paper. The letter brought them. The land kept them.

And the house Josef L. Leshikar built with his four sons in 1854 is still standing to tell the tale.

What the marker says

After Rev. Josef E. Bergman of Cat Spring wrote letter praising Texas, 33 Czech families immigrated to locality, 1851-1853. This first home was built in 1854 by Josef L. Leshikar and his 4 sons. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.