Tuesday I went to Lincoln to see the new International Quilting Center on UNL's East Campus in its showy new building and excellent facilities--except for limited parking spaces--thoroughly enjoying myself, after which I took U.S. 34 over to Nebraska 50 and headed for Pawnee County on the Kansas border. It's about 70-80 miles straight south of Omaha. That's where Great Great Grandmother Hlinovsky and one of her daughters, a son-in-law, two of their children, are buried, the daughter, Mary, being a sister to Francis/Fannie Hlinovsky Koftan, Grandpa Laurence J. Koftan's mother.
The day was excessively windy, and I had to drive into it going south, but it was sunny, too sunny as I discovered later when I looked at the photos I took. With two little maps from the Internet, I wasn't sure of the turn-off but quickly figured it out after passing the spot, and went a mile or two back. It's easy enough: where the sign says to go west two miles to Steinauer, you turn east and go a mile to a very typical rural Nebraska cemetery with tall cedars. I was glad the strong winds had dried the deeply rutted dirt road and was bumping along unsure when sister Sue called, a happy coincidence just before I found what I was looking for. What I bumped over were these nasty, deep channels up to a foot wide across the road from rapid run-off.
Anyway, this is what you'll see headed east: look for the tall cedars in the right distance.
Because the single grave of Rose/Rosa Hlinovsky and Joseph and Mary Zelenka and their two children are all buried there in a single family row, I assume they farmed in the vicinity, made up of rolling hills with plentiful water and trees--though when they came, I doubt there were many trees except along the creeks and rivers. (Various pioneering trails are associated with the nearby Big and Little Nemaha Rivers.) I later went about two miles east of Table Rock, southeast of this site, to the Czech National Cemetery but found only a married Zelenka couple there with much later dates. This is the view south from the west cemetery entrance.
Finally, for this entry, is our family row, looking north. At the bottom is the small marker for Rose Hlinovsky--her husband, Martin, took his daughters on to Tyndall, South Dakota, where he is buried--then the broken marker for Mary, their daughter, the double marker for the two Zelenka boys, Vaclav and George, and, challenged by the big cedar, the largest marker, for Joseph Zelenka. (The Pawnee Cemetery records have the family name and Vaclav's name wrong, as Zelenya and Vaglav.)
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