elkstore1895.net↗

In 1895, a fourteen-year-old boy left Moravia to seek the American dream. The boy’s ship landed in Galveston, Texas where he immediately was taken into indentured servitude, picking cotton for his passage. Through hard work, he escaped his plight and later settled in Elk, Texas. Once there, he had not forgotten the rewards of hard work and eventually came to own several cotton gins; eventually owning the Elk General Store. That fourteen-year-old boy was my great-grandfather, John Cyril Smajstrla