Margaret (Balaun) Stearns

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Biography

Historic Origins

I am a 4th generation American. Both branches of my tree, my father's Bohemian family and my mother's Irish and Scottish families were pioneers in the "settling" of midwest America.

I grew up wondering, wanting to learn, among other things, about my paternal roots in Bohemia, a perpetually warred-over little kingdom on the edge of Eastern Europe. When my great-grandparents, Josef and Barbora Baloun left Bohemia in 1866, they were under the rule of the Austrian Empire. For about a decade, the Joseph and Barbara Balaun family lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was during the 1870s that they left Pittsburgh to homestead in Ada, Kansas. Both died before WWI ended with the fall of the Austrian Empire and with the Kingdom of Bohemia becoming part of a new country named Czechoslovakia.

In 1937, just as Hitler was orchestrating the Nazi invasion of Slavic and Czech lands, I was born in Salina, Kansas. My people in America focused on the here and now. I grew up during WWII with little awareness of the lives of the people left behind in former homelands. We celebrated America's role in ending the war and establishing the UN to preserve peace worldwide. Throughout the decades of the communist era in Czechoslovakia, in America we proudly lived "The Dream."

In 1960 during the anti-Soviet cold war, I married John Stearns, a 12th generation New Englander from Vermont, expanding my interest and perspective of family and human history, particularly the history of the establishment of the United States. In 1963 I moved with my husband to his beloved Vermont. We both taught for many years at Leland&Gray, an historic secondary school in the West River Valley, Windham County VT. I have become intrigued with learning about the ever-changing individual lives of ordinary people— in a still-emerging "new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Time Line

1937 Jul 30: Birth

Born to Ellis and Rose-Mary (Hood) Balaun at St John's Hospital in Salina, Saline County, Kansas, United States of America.^[1]

1937-1946: Early Childhood^[2]

Lived in Salina, Kansas, with parents and brothers, JoePete (born 1934), John (born 1936), Ralph (born 1939) Bill (born 1943) and Paul (born 1945). Before WWII, our Dad, Ellis, was a real estate appraiser and farm loan examiner. During the war, he worked at Smoky Hill Army Air Base strategically located at Salina in the center of of the continent. His aptitude and industrial arts education were useful in producing called-for custom furnishings in the interiors of bombers. After the war, he focussed on a career in public school administration.

1941 November: death of Grampa Pete at St. John's Hospital^[3]

1942-43: Attended kindergarten at Bartlett (Public School)

1943-46: Attended Sacred Heart Grade School. Teachers were Sister Neiria, Grade 1; Sister Leona, Grade 2; and Sister Paula, Grade 3.

1946-47 At Nine-Years-Old

Moved with parents and five brothers to Ransom, Ness County, Kansas, broadening life experience and perspective through a year of rural community life including public school. Our Dad, Ellis, was the teaching Principal at Ransom High School (Grades 7-12). Across town at the Grade School, I was a 4th-grader in Miss Bessie Rogers' classroom which contained both Grade 3 and Grade 4.

1947-52 Growing Up

Sources

1. ↑ See image 1937... October visit with Grampa Pete in Oklahoma
2. ↑ "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VR24-J1C : 26 July 2019), Ellis Baloun, Ward 3, Salina, Salina City, Saline, Kansas, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 85-23, sheet 11A, line 17, family 236, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 1257.
3. ↑ See images 1941-Grampa Pete in Salina and 1942-Memorial Day at Balaun Homestead

• Margaret Balaun Stearns