The Novachek Twins


​A simple postcard from 1909 features an image of a ten year old boy and girl. Scribbled on the back are three names: Hilda, Otto, and Tillie Novachek. Behind those names lies a story of a family caught between the rural heartland of Iowa and the untamed promise of the Pacific Northwest.

​The two children staring out from the photo are Hilda and Otto. If you look at the back of the card, the handwriting notes that both are exactly ten years old. They weren't just close in age, they were twins, born in July 1899 to Bohemian immigrants Frank and Katie Novachek.

​The postcard was likely kept by their older sister, Ottilie "Tillie" Novachek (later Pegorek), who was about 25 at the time. When this photo was snapped, the family was standing on the edge of a massive life change.

For generations, the Novachek family had been firmly rooted in the farming communities of Jones County, Iowa. But by 1910, just a year after this portrait was taken, Frank and Katie packed up the twins and headed west, seeking new opportunities.

​They settled on the outskirts of Tacoma, Washington, exchanging the Iowa prairies for the towering pines of the Pacific Northwest. There, the family established a poultry farm. Hilda and Otto grew up helping tend the flock while adjusting to their new coastal life.

​But as the twins grew into adulthood, the map of their lives began to change.

​While the twins shared a face and a childhood, they did not share a destiny. As they grew older, the pull of geography took them in entirely separate directions:

  • ​Hilda: She fell in love with Washington state. She stayed in the Tacoma and Pierce County area for the rest of her life. She eventually married a man named Clarence, built a home near her parents' homestead, and became a lifelong Pacific Northwesterner.
  • ​Otto: For Otto, the West Coast was a temporary detour. As a young man, the call of the Iowa proved too strong. He moved right back across the country to Jones County, Iowa. He married a woman named Emma, returned to his roots as a Midwestern farmer, and raised his daughter, Ruth Marie, just down the road from where he was born. 
Meanwhile, their older sister, Tillie, the woman whose name anchors the right side of the postcard, never made the trek to Washington at all. She stayed in Jones County, raising her own family with her husband, Walter Pegorek. When Otto returned to Iowa as a young man, he was reuniting with the sister who had kept the family's Midwestern legacy alive. Tillie passed away in 1942, remaining in the heartland until the very end.

Today, the family is scattered across history, some buried under the skies of western Washington, others resting in the quiet soil of Iowa’s Mayflower Cemetery. 

​It makes you wonder: when Tillie held this postcard in her hands, looking at her ten year old twin siblings, did she have any idea that they would eventually head in different directions? 

​Every antique photo has a story. Sometimes, it just takes flipping it over to find the map.


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