I posted this picture originally in Jan. 9, 2012, asking anyone if they had any information about it. Well, December 6, 2015, Terry Larson responded. Thank you!
“The man in the picture is my great grandfather, Frank Mensik. He came to the United States about
1888 and settled first in Chicago, Illinois, then moved to Eatonville in the early 1890’s. He became a naturalized citizen and then helped other immigrants receive their citizenship. He and his wife, Mary Povlack Mensik, had 12 children. Their first child, Frank Jr., was just a baby when Frank Sr. first came to America and was left with family members. Frank Jr. came to America with his grandfather, Joseph Mensik, Joseph’s second wife, Anna, and their family in the early 1900’s. Frank Sr. owned Sun’s Rays Bakery in Eatonville, worked at the lumber mill, was a city councilman for a time, along with his mining. He died in Eatonville in 1935, just a bit more than a month after Mary. They are both buried in the Eatonville Cemetery.”
Photo courtesy of the Mensik family.
Click on image to enlarge.
Eatonville To Rainier 
5 responses to “Frank Mensik (early 1900s)”
Just ran across this article entitled “Joe’s Journal” in my computer from the Eatonville Dispatch, September 21, 1972, page 1 (found on smalltownpapers.org):
Joseph Mensik, father of Frank, Agnes, Annie, Anton and John, was mayor of a village of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His village was in what later became Czechoslovakia.
Joseph could see that the old Empire was going to break up. The Serbs, Albanians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Ruthenians, Slavs and other minorities were intent on independence, and he was sure there would be war so he emigrated to the United States and homesteaded, and lived to see the war he had predicted, World War I.
John Mensik’s farm is part of the Joseph Mensik homestead.
Washington was still a territory, and the Hudson’s Bay Company engaged settlers in every part of the Territory to do a certain amount of prospecting in the hope that one of them would strike a rich deposit of minerals, hopefully of gold.
It contacted Joseph Mensik, who, under the agreement, made stated explorations in this area, and was to make regular reports to the Company.
Joseph knew very well there were no valuable mineral deposits hereabouts and told the Company so, but they wanted him to proceed anyway.
Knowing the search was futile, Joseph Mensik was not very assiduous, and his reports showed it.
So Hudson’s Bay Compay sent a young representative to investigate.
The young representative, Cyrus C. Snow, met Joseph Mensik’s daughter, Agnes, they fell in love and married, and he never went back to work for Hudson’s Bay.
(This article has some truth and some fiction. We know that Joseph Mensik WAS the mayor of his town in the Czech Republic. But he didn’t emigrate until the early 1900’s. Frank Mensik was known to have prospected–see photo above. Perhaps he was the one hired by Hudson’s Bay Company. This will require more research. Cyrus C. Snow DID marry Agnes Mensik. Histories of Eatonville say that Snow came to this area looking for minerals. Perhaps there is some truth to the Hudson’s Bay Company story. It is interesting that it mentions Joseph as coming to Pierce County before Washington became a state. I suspect that this is true of FRANK MENSIK, Joseph’s son, but it is yet to be proved.)
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Thank you for this. It’s great!!
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Mensiks are my forefathers and now I am reviewing and study the lineage. I have some docs and a photo of Josef Mensik and family in Eatonville, WA. Vladimir J. Drbal, Belmont, California
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I would love to post them if you’d like.
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Please send me email and kindly identify your relationship to the Mensik family. Kind regards, Vladimir J Drbal, eurocal@aol.com.
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