2023 CGSI Conference Tours

CGSI members Arlene Gardiner and Susan Chapman will lead this motor coach tour to one of the early Czech rural settlements in the United States. Most of these early settlers came from the Czech-Moravian Highlands and the Orlické Hory (Eagle Mountains).

Many Czech families stopped in Caledonia before moving further west/southwest to such places as Minnetonka and Silver Lake, Minnesota; Cedar Rapids and Ely, Iowa; Clarkson, Nebraska; and Cuba, Kansas.

Stops include the Bohemian National Cemetery in Caledonia with its monument in memory of Bohemian immigrants, an 1888 Bohemian Schoolhouse, Caledonia Historical Village at Linwood Park, St. John Nepomuk Catholic church in Racine for lunch (Pork Loin, Sauerkraut, Dumpling, Rye Bread, Koláče, Coffee), and the Racine Heritage Museum. The cemetery ground is not always level and the multilevel Racine Heritage Museum is not handicap accessible (no elevators).

Matej Zika (later known by Matthias Secor), one of Racine’s oldest Czech settlers and a mayor of the city, owned a wooden trunk manufacturing business. Some of Secor’s work may be on display in the museum.

Drive by sites include a statue of Karel Jonáš, a lieutenant governor of Wisconsin and consul general to Austria-Hungary in Vienna, and the Karel Jonáš’s house in Racine.

This motor coach tour begins at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Library of the American Geographical Society, home of one of America’s foremost geography and map collections and a significant collection of Czech, Slovak, Bohemian, and Moravian maps.

Next stop are the Frank Lloyd Wright Burnham Row houses, residences which owe their existence to some form of client labor (do-it-yourself), ingenious cost-cutting or salvaging. Each magically shelters it occupants in beautiful spaces, connects them to nature, and allows them to feel more alive.

The tour ends at the spectacular Quadracci Pavilion and the moveable sunscreen, the Burke Brise Soleil, designed by Santiago Calatrava for the Milwaukee Museum. The MAM is currently closed on Tuesdays, and its board will decide in August whether to open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If the museum remains closed, the alternate tour stop will be the Frank Lloyd Wright Burnham Row houses. The museum tour includes a great deal of walking.

Lunch will be served at the famed Mader’s German restaurant (founded 1902). Guests will have a choice of three entrees. These will be shared to those who register. Dessert will be apple strudel topped with custard, a Wisconsin specialty.

After lunch the group will visit Milwaukee’s Third Ward and the Milwaukee Public Market, the first and largest food and craft market in the city. The market encourages locally owned food artisans and retailers.

To top off the day, the group will visit the Renaissance-style Basilica of St. Josaphat, including hand-painted columns. Docent Eva Barczyk has written Footprints of Polonia, Polish Historical Sites Across North America.

Tour guides will be Dee Nordgren and Mary Jane Scherdin

This motor coach tour of Milwaukee area ethnic sites will be led by Ed Langer and Frank Matusinec, two experienced local historians/tour guides. First stops will be Cudahy and the charming Wisconsin Slovak Historical Society Museum and the Cudahy Depot (1893), which many Slovaks used as they built new lives there. Also included is the former Slovak church St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church (1908).

Next, we will walk the Streets of Old Milwaukee and view the Czech, Slovak, Austrian, and German homes in the European Village at the Milwaukee Public Museum. We will visit Milwaukee’s two most important repositories for genealogical records, the Milwaukee County Historical Society and the Milwaukee City Library’s Frank Zeidler Humanities Room.

The group will lunch at Milwaukee’s famed Mader’s Restaurant (founded 1902). A choice of three entrees will be available and will be shared to those who register.

Drive by the original rectory (1869) of the St. John Nepomuk Church, the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist (cornerstone 1847), and Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church (1846). the first German Catholic parish in Milwaukee. Discover traces of the Zeidler brothers, who served as Milwaukee mayors, as we drive by the Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building, City Hall (1895) and Zeidler Union Square.