It is March 9, 1865.

Iowa farmer Jozef Kostlan, a recent immigrant, is writing to his family in Bohemia, whom he left in the 1850s.

His journey to America had begun on an emigrant ship in Bremen, Germany, then a major debarkation port for European emigrants.

After arriving in New York, he took a six-day train trip to Chicago, followed by another train trip to Cedar Rapids, in eastern Iowa, a place in which many Czech immigrants had settled.

After years of effort, Jozef owns an eighty-acre farm and five acres of woods and lives with his young family in a small house with “floors of nice, soft wood.”

And Iowa is proving to be a farmer’s paradise.

Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe