On the evening of 6 October 1904 Joseph Foral led a wagon from his home farm in Spruce loaded with grist bound for the mill in Lena. He fell and injured his his legs and head. A neighbor brought him to a doctor in Lena where he died a few hours later. He left his wife Maggie nine children, some young adults and a toddler, on the homestead in Spruce.

This is the family narrative from prolific Oconto County (WI) genealogist Bill Fonferek. There are corresponding documents from that period—Joseph’s death certificate (27 October 1904), Wisconsin State Census (1 June 1905), US Federal Census (5 May 1910) and Joe Jr.’s marriage certificate (15 June 1912)—that further define this event and its aftermath.

Joseph and Marguerite were immigrants from modern Czechia. Joseph was born in Brno in 18 August 1862, arrived alone in New York on 25 August 1881 and naturalized in Oconto on 1 April 1884. Marguerite was born in April 1868 in Klatovy. She immigrated to Leopolis (Shawano County) in 1881 with her parents. Marguerite lived in Spruce, usually called Maggie or Margaret, and died 1944.

They were born in the region between Prussia and Austria. In 1866, these two powers fought a war about nationalism and modernization. Bohemia, in modern Czechia, was one of the major fronts of that war. The war, it's aftermath and the subsequent unification of Lesser Germany (excluding Austria) is historiographically the Blood and Iron period of German nationalism under Bismarck. This followed the failed 1848 republican national impulse which in Germany was called the Märzrevolution. Nationalism was a method to upend the European status quo which had been restored by the Congress of Vienna (1814-5).

When Joseph and Marguerite were born, German nationalism was one established way for serfs to become citizens of the modern Prussian state. Joseph and Marguerite might have been repelled from Czechia by these historic forces.

Immigration to America was another path out of serfdom. This was possible because of America's successful republican revolution and the century of imperial conquest of frontier that followed. Joseph and Marguerite were attracted to Oconto as historic participants in agrarian settler colonialism on the frontier.

These two forces--pushing from Czechia and pulling toward Oconto--are predictable with historic perspective. In their time, Joseph and Marguerite were responding to conditions like cheap land, political participation and religious freedom.

They married on 25 July 1883 before either was a citizen. Maggie naturalized in 1909 five years after her husband died. Joseph John Foral and Margaret Stefl Foral are buried in Pine Hill Cemetery in Spruce, referenced as the historic "Bohemian Burial Grounds" in Fonferek.

After Joseph died, his wife's name varied on official documents. This includes an Anglicization from Francophone Marguerite to diminutive "Maggie" (‘04, ‘05, ‘12) to "Margaret" on her headstone in '44. Her surname is "Steffel" on Joe Jr.'s marriage certificate from '12. This spelling change might be influenced by the Steffels in Spruce who lived on an adjacent homestead; but the certificate is from Menominee, MI. Maggie "Steffel" was only recorded as such in '12.

The path from Marguerite to Maggie to Margaret might be Anglicization. That has implications that could distinguish reformed and Western Europe from Catholic and Eastern Europe. This is another contested historic geography featuring modern Czechia as a hinterland. This includes the Bohemian Jan Hus who was an early reformer of church hierarchy and clergy. As a reformer of Catholicism he followed John Wyclif and preceded Martin Luther.

These religious movements had nationalist functions just like the '48 republicans and the Prussian Bismarck. Religious reform challenged Catholic (Latin, Holy Roman or French) authority over Western Europe (and West Slavic-Eastern Europe). These didn't propose revolution to replace Christian theology. They reformed Church practice.

The splintering of authority manifested state churches in Bohemia and England. This also led to all kinds of Lutheran inspired reformists. By the Napoleonic Era the Catholic church was allied with French republican empire disbanded by the Congress of Vienna. Since then the Catholics have allied with imperial, republican and fascistic states all over the world. Post-Napoleon it seems that the defining social conflict morphed from church reform to modernization of the state economy.

Joseph and Marguerite's Czechia was is a geography contested by these historic forces. All of this cultural-historic baggage informed their Spruce homestead and their neighbors. The 1912 "Steffel" from Oconto is an unpredictable name that might be inspired by the Reformation emphasis on local language.

Two other unpredictable names appear during this period one each in 1905 and '10. Joseph Foral, dead for a half a year, appears alive on the '05 state census as a 42-year-old Austrian male and head of household. He is married to a 38-year-old Austrian woman named Maggie. In '10, the head of household is a 43-year-old Austrian-Bohemian woman, of no previous record, the widow named Josephine Foral.

The reconciliation of the phantom Joseph from 1905 might be about property rights to the farm. The recording of Maggie's citizen husband on the state census in '05 did give her five years to get her papers before the Federal census in '10. That might be one reason Maggie naturalized in '09. The property rights of a non-citizen woman in rural Wisconsin might be limited by law or custom.

Reconciling Josephine Foral from 1910 probably doesn’t involve property rights. It might be Foral family cultural linguistics. There could be conventions of historic Slavic, Greater German or Latin periods that influence Maggie’s name inherited from her Bohemian roots. Maggie's cultural history comes from a muddled Eastern Europe imprinted on a inconsistently defined rural, colonial, frontier.

To compound the muddle, the two were from different parts of Czechia. Joseph was Moravian and Maggie was Bohemian. The Foral surname is common in east Czechia. There are stores and professionals in Brno and Babice with this last name. Fonferek’s version of the Foral family tree includes surnames Suchý, Mikšík and Savčina. These are also surnames from Joseph's Moravia. The town where most of Joseph’s family were born is Babice which is in Uherské Hradiště District of the Zlín Region. This is near Brno, Joseph's recorded birthplace. Geographically this is the South Moravian region of eastern Czechia. Brno has historically been a large enough urban place to have varying cultural traditions--and naming conventions--inspired by different groups of people who lived there.

Joseph was Christened in Brno. There was a Catholic Church in Spruce when Joseph lived there. The local naming conventions were probably influenced by this Latin tradition. Oconto County was settled predominantly by Catholics: first French and then Czechs, Germans and Poles. These people came from regions with reformed Christian traditions: Hussite, Lutheran, Anglican and Huguenot. The religious map of European immigrants to Oconto county were in historical proximity to Islam from Türkiye, Judaism from Poland and Orthodoxy from Ukraine.

Joseph the Moravian and Marguerite the Bohemian were of the Latin-Catholic tradition but they were born in an Eastern European region that was historically contested theological space. With that in mind, their kids names code Anglo-Catholic. Anna (Sainted mother of Mary) and Emma (of Stiepel) are traditionally Catholic. Anton born in Oconto had an uncle Antonin born in Moravia who only lived four months. This is a common Czech version of the Latin name Antonius. Both George and Albert seem to have contemporaneous Victorian significance. Edmond might be named after St. Edmund who was a 9th century Anglo-Saxon hero killed by the Norse. The other first generation Foral was named Willon. This is not a common English version with obvious historic significance.

Add to these Catholic and English traditions a third naming convention. This includes patronymic derivation, which is a version of the Anglo suffix seen in the second Foral son: Joe "Junior." The Slavs describe someone as the child of their father. The result of this convention is a girl born to Marguerite and Joseph named Josephina or "daughter of Joseph." Mamie, the daughter of Marguerite, is in this type; but her name signifies matrilineage. The oldest Foral son was named George, a British sounding name without obvious kinship significance. The next got the Anglo version of patronymic derivation.

This isn’t the mechanism that caused Maggie’s name change in 1910. Marguerite was from the Bohemian side of Czechia. This might include different German naming conventions than the West Slavs of Moravia. The German diminutive convention seems to generally describe what is happening in the '10 census. Two German suffixes that fit this diminutive purpose are observed in examples—little woman: (Frau)-lein and little rabbit: (Hase)-chen. When Marguerite answers to Josephine she is literally "little" Joseph.

This isn’t a social rule about the hierarchy of parentage or disciple-ship. Instead this appears to be an affectionate way for Maggie to refer to her dead husband Joseph. Or a book-keeping tactic. Or an ill-informed census taker...

The satisfying part of the German diminutive convention is that it fits with Marguerite’s personal style of diminution. In ‘04, ‘05 and ‘12 she was called "Maggie" or little Marguerite. She discarded this by the 1940s for "Margaret" which is the permanent name on her headstone.

It is possible that in 1910 she tried on a hybrid German-Slavic: little Joseph or "Josephine" that referenced her husband after his unexpected death. That was not a long term fit. By Junior’s wedding in 1912 she was called to Maggie "Steffel" Foral.

There are more maudlin, legal and patriotic ways to interpret this nominal change and resolve the historical inconsistency. The satisfying way to understand Maggie’s years as Josephine is as a fashion influenced by her cultural heritage in memory of her husband. We all have the agency to interpret our individual historical culture within the modern social zeitgeist and invent traditions that address modern conditions.

This can be as simple a trying on a new name.