A short history of Martin and Josephine Cada

Martin's last name was spelled Cada with an accent over the C to create the ch sound. Bedrich came here with the same spelling but found everyone mispronouncing it so he walked the forty miles from Coal City in Illinois to the county seat at Morris to have it legally changed to Chada.

Bedrich Cada came to the United States through the port of Baltimore, Maryland, on May 27, 1888. He arrived together with a boyhood friend, Anton Cervenka. Anton later changed his last name to Cermak and became the mayor of Chicago and took a bullet for Roosevelt.

Mathew came to the U.S. in 1873 through New York. He was a tinsmith but couldn't find work so he continued on to Chicago. There he met and married Mary Kral. They settled in Coal City, IL, where he worked as a coal miner until 1895. Later they operated a general store until 1925.

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