Lake County IN Archives Biographies.....Kozacik, Michael 1873 - 
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Author: T. H. Ball (1904)

MICHAEL KOZACIK.

    Michael Kozacik is a self-made man who is now the possessor of valuable
property interests and who at the outset of his business career was
empty-handed. He had no inheritance or influential friends to aid him, but by
determined purpose and perseverance he has gradually accumulated a handsome
competence. He is now engaged in business as a retail liquor dealer at Whiting.
A native of Austria, he was born on the 29th of September, 1873, and was reared
in his native country until more than eighteen years of age, during which period
he acquired his education in attendance at the public schools. He entered upon
his business career as a day laborer in Austria, receiving but twenty-five cents
per day. Not content with business conditions, however, in that country, he
resolved to test the favorable reports which he had heard concerning
opportunities in the new world, and making arrangements to leave Europe when
about eighteen years of age he sailed for America and came from the Atlantic
coast to the Mississippi valley, establishing his home at Blue Island, Illinois.
There he remained for but two months, but not succeeding in finding work there
he removed to Whiting and entered the employ of the Knickerbocker Ice Company.
His position necessitated his working ten hours per day at a salary of one
dollar and a quarter. Strong resolution and untiring purpose, however. were
numbered among his salient characteristics, and he continued to work through the
ice-cutting period. He afterward entered the employ of the Standard Oil Company
at a salary of one dollar and a half per day, and continued in the service of
that corporation for seven and a half years. He was fireman and did various
other kinds of work, and during the period of his service with the company, he
managed to save from his earnings the sum of thirteen hundred dollars. In the
meantime he had also married and furnished his home. With the capital he had
acquired through his labor and economy he invested his money in Whiting property
and also established a small saloon in a little frame building, where he
conducted a retail liquor business for a few years. During that period he
erected a building at Indiana Harbor at a cost of six thousand dollars, but
becoming convinced of the fact that Indiana Harbor was not a desirable place he
sold his property there, and erected the building in Whiting that he now
occupies, at a cost of ten thousand dollars.

    Although Mr. Kozacik had but six dollars when he landed in the United States
he is to-day in good circumstances. He is a liberal man, who has given generous
assistance to the poor, and he is a public-spirited citizen, who takes a deep
and active interest in general progress and in the material development of
Whiting. The hope that led him to leave his native country has been more than
realized for in the new world he has won prosperity, gained a comfortable home
and has also found many friends. In politics, he is a strong Democrat and always
does all in his power for the interests of that party, and, May 3rd, 1904, he
was elected to represent the first ward in the Whiting city council.

    To the union of Mr. Kozacik and wife have been born four sons, viz: Michael,
Peter, John and Paul.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF
Genealogy and Biography
OF
LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA,
WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 
1834—1904

A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and
the Founding of a Nation.

REV. T. H. BALL
OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO   NEW YORK
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1904


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