Bohemia: Looking back 100 years

Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but one of the new blogs on our newspaper Web site, www.bnd.com, is Wally's Old World, in which I look back at our newspaper 100 years ago for interesting stories.

There is a wealth of material. Take for instance this story of long distance marriage, the wedding of Gaspard Stanisch, 35, and Elizabeth Ferend, 19, in the little Bohemia section of East St. Louis in April 1909.

The wedding is interesting, but the remarkable thing is how it came about and the trek the wife took to get here, as reported in the Belleville Daily Advocate.


"Six months ago, Stanisch's wife died. The bereaved husband remembered a little girl he had left behind him in Bohemia. Stanisch ... reflected that Elizabeth must be 19 by now and therefore old enough to marry," the newspaper wrote.