Mary Machacek was born on Saturday, April 20, 1850 in House #491, Kutna Hora, Bohemia to Frank & Katherine Machacek. She was 14 years old when the family traveled to Bremen, Germany where they boarded the SS America, which landed in the New York Hudson River Harbor area on Tuesday, September 13,1864.

On departing Kutna Hora, Mary and her family were leaving children Josephine & Emanuel Machacek buried at the church cemetery in Sedlec, Bohemia. Their deaths were due to Dropsy.

While ten children boarded the SS America, one of these, 15-month-old Anton Machacek, died en route and was buried in the North Atlantic waters on Wednesday, September 7, 1864.

Mary, her parents and her eight surviving siblings traveled via a small barge to New Jersey to catch a boxcar attached to a train that traveled west to Iowa City, Iowa. Then, the family either walked or rode in horse-drawn wagons to St. Ansgar where the family purchased a farm in October 1864. A few years later, her parents sold this farm and bought another in Lyle Township, Mower County, Minnesota.

Mary & Vincent Funda were married on Sunday, February 5, 1870 and settled on a farm northeast of St. Ansgar. He was almost 30 & she was almost 20. The couple had five children: Anna, George, Charles, Jerome & Theodore, who died at two months old.

Twelve years into their marriage, Vincent died on Thursday, July 20, 1882, in St. Ansgar. Mary and with her four children, continued to live on in the old house. Her son Charles died in 1899 at the age of 23.

We know that Mary spent time as a teacher in the Woodbury 1-room school in Lyle Township where she was well-received because she instructed in both Czech and English.

Mary, almost 63, developed intestinal tuberculosis and after a month of severe pain, died on Sunday, March 23, 1913.

Funeral services were conducted by Reverend C.D. Belen of Austin with Interment in Woodbury Cemetery, Lyle Township, Minnesota.

Mary's obituary said she was a woman of kindly heart and disposition and was one of the best mothers as well as a neighbor and friend. She left four brothers and a sister as follows: Joseph Machacek of Austin, Charles of Albert Lea, Lewis of Lyle, Amos of Austin and Mrs. H. Moshier (Antonette Machacek) of Lyle.

Of the four children of Vincent and Mary Funda who reached adulthood, none married and all continued living together. At their respective deaths, all of the Funda family members were buried in Woodbury Cemetery, where the family had made a generous contribution.

A portion of the data in this memorial came from the Mower County Transcript, 2 April 1913, page 2, column 4 under heading "DEATHS."