Our “CHADIMA” Family
The oldest relative we have identified with certainty is Franz Joseph Chadima (1825-1911), who emigrated to North America from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) after his father received permission, in 1856, to exempt him from taxes.
On Aug. 10, 1857, Franz, a professional musician, married Marie Theresa at Old St. Mary´s catholic church at Chicago, Illinois, Those records burned in the 1871 Chicago fire .
Franz served in the Union Army as a drummer during the U.S. Civil War. After the war, the couple moved to the Pacific Northwest and homesteaded near Kalama, Washington State.
Their only son, Frank Chadima, had no children. Their daughter Isabelle had a daughter. Their second daughter, Blanche Rose Chadima (1877-1964), married three times. Her first marriage, to Joseph Archer Nesbit (1855-1945), bore two sons with male offspring originating the Nesbit-Heuchart, Nesbit-XMary and three daughters who produced the Hamm-Nesbit and Segar-Nesbit branches. Blanche Rose’s last two marriages raise only daughters that originate the branches Harris-Harmon, Wray Harmon and Pitt-Mc Gowan.
Recognition and sources
En 2007, la bisnieta de Franz, Kathleen HM, viajó a la República Checa. She did research at the Prague archives with the assistance of a local expert and met M. Chadima, a serious genealogist who over decades had built a Chadima family tree going back to the 1600´s. That Chadima family originated from Siroky Dul, a rural sparsely populated area of the Pardubice Region. Until 2022 we could neither confirm nor deny a link between our Franz Chadima and the ancestors of this family tree. family tree
Research priorities
- We would like to collaborate with known and new Chadima family researchers in the Czech Republic, North America or elsewhere. We plan to enable Czech and German language translations. We plan to offer German translations and our family tree on Webtrees accepts data in Czech.
- We are actively actively Maria Teresa’s maternal surname and her adopted surname, if she had one, since she always used her married name.
