There might have been a slide show of fall photographs from the scenic Olmitz neighborhood in Pleasant Township here this morning --- had I gotten on that track a little earlier. Instead, too much time was spent poking around trying to figure out where in the world the place name "Olmitz" came from.
Olmitz was a coal mining town with a population of about 500 that developed along Cedar Creek in a fairly remote part of Lucas County beginning in 1915 and continuing until 1926-1927 when the mines that had given it life (known as Tipperary and Olmitz) closed. After that, it vanished as mining families moved to Williamson or elsewhere and buildings were moved away or demolished for materials.
The town had taken its name from the neighborhood where the mines were developed and that neighborhood had gained its name in 1888 when the Olmitz post office was established some distance north on the David Fluke farm. The map here shows the original location of the Olmitz post office, circled, and the new location a couple of miles south. The post office operated in its first incarnation in the hills north of Cedar Creek from 1888 until 1905, when it was discontinued; then was resurrected at the new location during 1916 and closed for the final time on Nov. 30, 1928.
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There have been, so far as I can tell, only two villages in the United States named Olmitz --- one in Lucas County and the other, a survivor, in Barton County, Kansas. That town was established in 1885 by settlers from the Moravian region of what now is the Czech Republic. It was named after the principal town of the region, Olomouc, translated from Czech to German, Olmutz, then anglicized as Olmitz.
Olomouc is one of those places that has been fought over several times in its long history and, until the end of World War II, had a majority population that was ethnically German. Those Germans were for the most part enthusiastic supporters of Hitler --- renaming the town's principal square after him, destroying the city synagogue on Kristallnacht and aiding, actively or passively, in the deportation of a majority of the city's Jewish population to concentration camps --- and death.
After the war, Olomouc ended up behind what we called the Iron Curtain and Germans were expelled by the Soviet-backed regime in charge of what then was christened Czechoslovakia.
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But none of that explains why Oliver Fluke selected the name "Olmitz" for the post office established in a new store on his father's farm in Pleasant Township, Lucas County, Iowa, during 1888. So perhaps that will remain a mystery.
There were four postmasters at the original site before it was discontinued during November of 1905 --- Oliver Fluke, Joseph Fluke, Allen Cox and Loren Fluke.
Four postmasters served the resurrected post office in Olmitz village --- Lela Kingman, appointed in July 1916; Jay F. Batten, August 1921; Margaret M. Gilman, April 1927; and Eugenia Turner, January 1928 until the end.
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