Translation Not Required

My grandfather, Vojtěch Kněz, came to America with his mother and four siblings in 1903 when he was 13 years old. His father, Matěj Kněz, had come ahead the year before.

I once said to my grandfather, “What’s the name of the town you came from in the old country?” He replied, “Sand.” I thought that was kind of a funky name for a town anywhere, especially in Czechoslovakia (as it was then), but if the man said he was from Sand, he was from Sand.

He had been dead 15 years by the time I started climbing the family tree, and for 25 years I kept looking at maps of Bohemia, Moravia, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and (after 1993) the Czech Republic trying to find a town called Sand. No such luck. I finally posted a query on a genealogy message board about it, and I was informed that there was no town named Sand but that there was a town called Písek. Can anybody guess what the word písek means in Bohemian? Right -- sand.

Thanks, Gramps.