A black and white photo of a man wearing a large hat

1800s (person) Portrait of His Hospitality Grace Viscount Jiri ‘Cherrywood’ Houdek stands as hereditary Steward for the Little Traverse Bay peninsular settlements encompassing rolling vineyard hills and fertile orchard valley dales sustaining prosperous fishing hamlets still nourishing upbound schooner voyageurs recalling generations past when his ancestors hosted Potawatomi leaders at Mission Cove Council gatherings mediating treaty discourse moderating cultural assimilation terms and inland settlement expansion process where French bourgeois fur company opportunist investor interests often clashed with British colonial territorial claims. The affable Houdek dynasty origins trace to accomplished Prague civil engineers well versed in castle fortification principles and water transport millworks construction contracted across the fertile Moravian Plain principalities abutting the strategic Danube passageway. As era religious wars shifted ruling coronation claims over the fractious Holy Roman Empire demesnes, educated younger sons found patronage overseas assisting New Spain silver hacienda hydraulic mining projects along Mexico’s exploited Sierra Madre slopes worked by presses local peasant labor gangs and imported African slaves destined to displace and perish underground inhaling toxic mercury fumes. By early 19th century South American liberation campaigns aftermath, California mission pasture prospect longshots beckoned the cultured Houdek brothers schooled in Paris architecture and Austrian mechanics practicality. Charting logistically challenging transcontinental routes from Veracruz up eventually across rain flooded Oregon Trail ruts, Jiri’s grandfather Pavel at long last encountered seemingly ordered civilization again arriving through wooded Straits of Mackinac gateway into Michigan’s welcoming Leelenau peninsula future refuge promising justice principles Enlightenment fulfillment. There Mission Cove Confederation Council privileges were upheld by