cemetery. The cemetery was fenced off immediately to the southeast of the frame church. In this church yard are buried the earliest Czech pioneers of this region, with the first burial that of Jan Kolman in1870. As the years passed, many of the Czech community came to find their resting place there. There are few families of Czech heritage in the area that cannot trace at least a distant relative to the Blue River Valley Church Cemetery.
stands. This frame building was known as the "Lutheran Church " and was situated approximately two hundred feet to the northeast of the main entry of the current building.
The Lutheran congregation purchased forty acres of land from Joseph Novak (a founder of the Reformed Church) with the intent of reserving a sizable portion of it for a
The Reformed Church
The first was the "Reformed Church" building built in 1868 by the southern group on Joseph Dvorak's land near the site of the old Kolman flour and feed mill. The mill was located on the Six Mile Branch of the Blue River just south of the present intersection of County Highway "Q" and Stanek Road. The church building was a log structure twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet wide by ten feet high. Although no photographs or drawings of the log church have been preserved, an earlier history described it as being built in the style typical of Bohemian log buildings with a whitewashed exterior and widely extended roof overhangs at the gables. It had rough hewn board benches for pews and a plain board altar.
The Lutheran Church
In the following year, 1869, the northern group erected a white frame structure approximately a mile and a half to the north. The site is on the grounds where the current Blue River Valley Church building
