Posted
April 19, 2008
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News:
Bridgette and I were married on
October 14, 2007.
The
Hajicek family has a
300-year history of entrepreneurial businesses, evolving from merchant
trading, agribusiness, beverage bottling, automobile parts, toy manufacturing, and software development. For almost a century, the family has moulded
rubber for the restoration and conservation profession, and currently
also makes rubber parts and weather stripping for models from all
American, British, and German automakers including parts for new cars,
and makes specialty rubber parts for all industries.
I worked momentarily for the family rubber business in Minnesota (in which I
later held indirect stock acquired with my own money), and then for 10 years in the hotel and restaurant industry—including executive positions with Hyatt Regency Hotels in Wisconsin, Florida, and Missouri. I
was a director of restaurants before returning to graduate school to study economics, entrepreneurial business, and direct marketing. I have used my own earned finances and ventured successively into book printing, writing books, historical consulting, historic site restoration, real estate investing and development, stock trading on the Internet, a blue jeans
distribution concept, and restaurant concepts.
I love my breathtaking and sweet-spirited
wife, Bridgette Renee. I am a married, full-time, stay-at-home
father and with Bridgette we have five children, Jessica (16), Samantha (14), Jacob J. (10), J.
Daniel (6), and Ashton X. (4). My life is more enhanced then ever before by my lovely and loving
wife.
I also have some charitable commitments that require more time
than I had available to commit. One of these commitments includes 8 volumes of historical
writing. This is my 10th year living in the same countryside home in Jackson
County, Missouri, but I am currently building a new home/library/archives on
a nearby lake lot. More than 10 years ago I created this Internet site, and
have recently updated it for 2007.
For 25 years, I have been best known as one of the leading
private collectors in family-oriented early Americana, particularly rare
books and artifacts related to specific American folk religions. I started
collecting books in high school, bought my first $2,000 book when I turned
18, and now buy high end books in the $5,000 - $500,000 range. Acquisitions in my $25 million collection
of 25,000 items have included, just for example:
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More than one copy of the first book printed in Jackson County, Missouri, where I live, A Book of Commandments, 1833.
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Numerous hymn books, including
a half-dozen copies of a rare book of Sacred Hymns, from Kirtland, Ohio, 1835;
several copies of the second edition from Nauvoo, Illinois; and many associated hymn
books of that period from 1835-1864.
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Any early book of
scripture, particularly multiple copies of any American scriptures or
ancient historical writings discovered in or published in America, many
in early treed calf bindings; particularly those printed between 1830
and 1856.
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Select early American Bibles, ranging from the Holy Bible from Cooperstown, New York, 1828; to the Holy Scriptures from Plano, Illinois, 1867, bound in gilded scarlet goatskin.
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Arguably the most significant private collection of
rare bound volumes of American newspapers, 1830-1856, and rare
tracts in original printed wrappers, 1830-1880.
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Books about American cultural tolerance, including certain religious books owned by American slaves;
as well as books written by civil rights leaders of the 19th Century
who ran for public office as high as the presidency, including
presidential campaign pamphlets from 1844.
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The only copy in private hands of a book printed in
America by a crowned king on a royal press.
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A complete copy of a rare religious book in uncut
sheets, that was rescued from a frontier mob that destroyed its
press.
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A rare 1848 pamphlet by Lyman Wight, the founder of
the Texas settlement where the ancestors of my children lived.
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Rare religious art, including Mississippi River scenes of a Latter Day temple by the western artist Seth Eastman,
a major portrait collection painted by the folk artist and pattern maker
named Sutcliffe Maudsley, and a portrait by David W. Rogers.
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A hand-carved sun-faced white
Mississippi limestone sculpture that is partner to the one that the Smithsonian Institution has displayed next to the original Old Glory flag.
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Rare
black and white photography of churches and other architecturally
important buildings, like the earliest known photograph of the “The House of the Lord” in Kirtland, Ohio.
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The most important book written by Alexander Campbell, founder of
the other Church of Christ, published at Boston, 1832; and a similar
book by E. D. Howe printed in Painesville, Ohio. Even children’s books, such as the first popular Americanized edition of Mother Goose’s Melodies,
1833, with hand-colored engravings, and other unusual and frequently
overlooked curiosities.
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All materials consequential to early American religions, especially the earliest members of the Church of Christ organized in upstate New York in 1830.
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Everything related to the history of religions in upstate New York, 1820-1831; Ohio, 1831-1837; Missouri, 1831-1839; Illinois, 1839-1848; Wisconsin, 1844-1856; Michigan and Lake Michigan
(particularly the Islands of the Great Lakes), 1846-1856; and Utah and the West, 1847-1857.
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Everything written by or about the earliest
Latter Day Saints, the primitive founders of a restored American
religion, before the settlement of the West.
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Twenty-five thousand related religious items: early maps, diaries, manuscripts, letters, minute books, newspapers, books, tracts, broadsides, association artifacts, sculptures,
paintings, sketches, prints, early photographs, and so forth.
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Comments:
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