MOTT - For a few days, Mott will become the Czech Republic.

A funny-looking tricolored flag will fly from Adeline Carvell's front porch. The air will smell of sauerkraut and sweet kolaches filled with a paste of ground poppy seed.

The predominant eye color will be brown, possibly a little red around the edges. The Czechs do enjoy their beer. And stories will be told. The Czechs like to talk and talk some more.

And if the good Germans of Mott don't want to be part of the Czech Republic, the separation will be utterly peaceful, as it was when the Slovakians went their way from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet empire broke up in 1992. Not a shot will be fired, unless it's from a glass.

The Czechs are coming to Mott from far and wide across America and even the Czech Republic to observe the 100th anniversary of their homestead takeover.

They are all descended from the Svihovec clan, which in itself occupies a singular place in North Dakota's homestead history.

Back in 1907, seven Svihovec brothers took out 160-acre homestead claims -side by each, as the Germans would say - on the county line splitting Adams and Hettinger counties.

There was not so much as a tree on all of that land. Even the grass was gone, burned in one of the largest wildfires ever that stretched from the Rainy Buttes to the Missouri River.

It was hard, often sad, going to make a life out there, 17 miles from where the first building was being erected in the village of Mott.

There was a lot of nothing but hope and the unusual configuration of so many brothers.

One descendant is Kevin Carvell, whose mother, Adeline, was a Svihovec.

Kevin Carvell, of Fargo, is a noted North Dakota history buff with likely the largest private collection of histories and writings by and about North Dakotans - several thousand volumes and papers.

From his own knowledge and the historians he's checked with, he's convinced that the story of seven brothers - Emil, Frank Jr., Louis, James, Vincent, Joseph and Charles - homesteading together is unprecedented anywhere across the Great Plains.

He said the Svihovecs will keep the title until it's challenged and, in true Czech style, give it up peaceably if it comes to that.

More than 250 strong, they'll converge on Mott July 13-15. The temporary headquarters of the Czech Republic will be the Final-Go-Round Restaurant and Lounge, which is owned by Svihovec descendant and chef Larry Rieker.

There'll be food, beer and dancing, and, if anyone wants to stop in and visit, no DNA will be taken at the door, Kevin Carvell said.

The Svihovecs, meantime, will be gabbing and trying to figure out who's descended from which brother and sort out all of the branches on a complicated family tree. Beer will either help or hinder.

They'll have stories to tell, including the story of one of the brothers' sons, Charles, who was found dead in his burned-down house near Mott with a bullet through his heart, next to a man with a bullet in his lungs.

A murder-suicide theory was proposed and both men were alternately suspected. So was a theory of double murder. The 1936 case was never solved.

They'll visit the homestead where one descendant, Arlyce Frieze, with her husband, John, still farms.

Kevin Carvell suspects this could be the final hurrah for the Svihovecs, who gathered once before, in 1977. He thinks the generations will lose touch with the seven brothers who were among 250,000 men and women who homesteaded 2.7 million government acres and swelled the state's population by 80 percent in that one year.

Adeline Carvell, 85, said she believes she is the last of her generation, the last living child of one of those seven brothers, Emil, and the last one to remember life out there on the homesteads.

She said it's been hard to say goodbye to so many.

She will be the matriarch of the Mott Czech Republic, the one whose memory will be constantly consulted as her relatives attempt to sort out the various fruits of the family tree.

She carries a genealogical history in her head and, just as importan, a recipe for poppy seed kolaches that melt in the mouth and have the unmistakable taste of the homeland.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)