Have you heard of the The Slovak Colonization Company? This important and historic Slovak-American company played a key role in early Slovak immigrant life.

The Slovak Colonization Company was founded by Peter Rovnianek in response to the 1890 Connellsville, Pennsylvania strike of about 18,000 Slovak Miners fighting against cut wages and exploitation.

Mr. Rovnianek and his colleagues Mr. Schwartz-Maravich, Julius Wolf, and F. Pucher searched around North America for an ideal location where the Slovaks could return to their farming roots and put the mines and factories behind them. Eventually they purchased 3,000 acres of prairieland in the former Quapaw native lands of Arkansas.

Thanks to his dedication to his fellow expatriated countrymen and women, around 300 Slovak, Czech, and Bohemian immigrants found new opportunities for community, prosperity, and generational growth in Slovactown, Arkansas.

Mr. Rovnianek is well known in the Slovak immigrant historical books for founding the National Slovak Society (Národný slovenský spolok) the first supraregional non-denominational association for Slovaks in the USA and Slovenský dennik, the first Slovak newspaper outside of Slovakia / Hungary. However, his role in the formation of this historical Slovak settlement is not well known.

We at UpRooted Media are working to change this through the documentary the Pioneers of Slovak, Arkansas.

The community that was built back in 1894 to provide farm life as an option has been a massive success. Little did Mr. Rovnianek know that it would one day become the #1 place for rice production in America.

Honoring him, the founding families, and those that are still living out Rovnianek’s dreams is something worth doing!

Documenting and archiving is our way of ensuring his history is not lost!