Bio: Merkun, Anton & Johana

Transcriber: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Merkun, Zupec, Cesnik, Keller, Landini

----Source: Family Scrapbook

Anton Merkun was born in Ig near Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1877. He came to the U.S. in 1901. Johana Zupec was born in Iska Loka near Ljubljana on December 20, 1879. She came to the U.S. in 1902. The trip crossing the ocean took 22 days. The weather was often stormy and most of the passengers were seasick. One of the happiest moments of their lives was when they landed in New York.

They both settled in Ely, Minnesota and were married there on January 25, 1903. Anton worked in the iron ore mines and she took in boarders. He did not like working in the mines and decided to leave for Wisconsin with a number of families from Ely and other Iron Range cities. On May 10, 1910 they traveled by train to Gorman. They settled on forty acres of land purchased through real estate agent Ignac Cesnik at $10 per acre.

The land had huge pine stumps and much stone. The second growth trees and brush were removed with two- man saws and axes, the women working along side the men. After the trees were cleared away crops were planted between the remaining stumps. The logging roads were used to get the cream to the railroad depot either carrying it on the back or pushing the can in a wheelbarrow.

For a number of years the men would return to Min¬nesota during the winter to work in the mines in order to buy more livestock and land.

The farmers started building roads on township lines using horses and dynamite. Needless to say, they were ex¬tremely muddy. The first cars were bought around 1920 and often had to be pulled with horses when the wheels would get buried in mud to the hub caps. Winter travel was a real hardship with heavy snowfalls and no snow removal equipment but shovels. Many times people would be snow bound for weeks.

When the cheese factory was built, the sale of milk and wood for the boiler contributed a great deal to their income. Their farm consisted of 140 acres when Anton passed away in 1948. Johana sold the farm to Louis Landini Sr. when she went to Ely to make her home with her niece whom they had raised. She passed away in 1974. The farm is now owned by Mr. and Mrs. John Keller.