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 of 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 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 that 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 today 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 interest 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.

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. By Rev. T. H. Ball of Crown Point, Editor-in-chief. The Lewis Publishing Company, 1904, page 316-317.