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I am John Hajicek, an economist, investor, rare book collector, writer, and single father living in Jackson County, Missouri.  My greatest passion is as a sort of “Indiana Jones” of American religious history, always on a quest to discover some legendary relic said to be sacred.  I specialize in artifacts (mostly rare books, historic manuscripts, fine art, early photographs, and famous objects) from Vermont, New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  I have discovered most of the major new contributions to Mormon history in the past 35 years, and am currently working and writing on Joseph Smith Sr. and the roots of Mormonism in Vermont and New York.  I preserve and place substantial discoveries from the Smith family and Book of Mormon founding witnesses with responsible private collectors and scholarly libraries.  I am not Mormon exactly, and not practically a member of any regularly organized church, but I believe that the Mormon experience of Joseph Smith was earnest and just.

The Hajicek family has a 300-year history of entrepreneurial businesses, evolving from merchant trading, agribusiness, beverage bottling, automobile parts, toy manufacturing, and software development. For almost a century, the family has moulded rubber for the restoration and conservation profession, and currently also makes rubber parts and weather stripping for models from all American, British, and German automakers including parts for new cars, and makes specialty rubber parts for all industries.

I worked momentarily for the family rubber business in Minnesota (in which I later held indirect stock acquired with my own money), and then for 10 years in the hotel and restaurant industry—including key management positions with Hyatt Regency Hotels in Wisconsin, Florida, and Missouri. I was a director of restaurants before returning to graduate school to study economics, entrepreneurial business, and direct marketing. I have used my own earned finances and ventured successively into book printing, writing books, historical consulting, historic site restoration, real estate investing and development, stock trading on the Internet, a blue jeans distribution concept, and restaurant concepts.

I have three children: Jessica (35), Samantha (33), and Jacob (29).

In 2011 Jessica was a college senior at BYU, having been a married college senior at 19. Samantha was a college sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, in her second year living away at college at 17. Jacob was a high school freshman.

I also have some charitable commitments that require more time than I had available to commit. One of these commitments includes 12 volumes of historical writing. That makes 30 years of living in the same countryside home in Jackson County, Missouri. I created this Internet site in 1999, 27 years ago.

I have worked with rare books and valuable documents for 45 years. I am best known as one of the leading private collectors in faith-based and historical early Americana, particularly rare books and artifacts related to specific American folk religions. I started collecting books in high school, bought my first $2,000 book when I turned 18, and now buy high end books in the $5,000 - $500,000 range. I have spent $25 million in acquisitions/discovery of 50,000 items, which have included, just for example:

• Books and printed documents
  • Four copies of the first book printed in Jackson County, Missouri, where I live, A Book of Commandments, 1833.
  • Numerous hymn books, including a half-dozen copies of a rare book of Sacred Hymns, from Kirtland, Ohio, 1835; several copies of the second edition from Nauvoo, Illinois; and many divergent hymn books of that period from 1835-1864.
  • Any early book of scripture, particularly multiple copies of any American scriptures or ancient historical writings discovered in or published in America, many in early treed calf bindings; particularly those printed between 1830 and 1856.
  • Select early American Bibles, ranging from the Holy Bible from Cooperstown, New York, 1828; to the Holy Scriptures from Plano, Illinois, 1867, bound in gilded scarlet goatskin.
  • Arguably the most significant private collection of rare bound volumes of American newspapers, 1830-1856, and rare tracts in original printed wrappers, 1830-1880.
  • Books about American cultural tolerance, including certain religious books owned by American slaves; as well as books written by civil rights leaders of the 19th Century who ran for public office as high as the presidency, including presidential campaign pamphlets from 1844.
  • The only copy in private hands of a book printed in America by a crowned king on a royal press.
  • A complete copy of a rare religious book in uncut sheets, that was rescued from a frontier mob that destroyed its press.
  • A rare 1848 pamphlet by Lyman Wight, the founder of the Texas settlement where the ancestors of my children lived.
• Art and photography
  • Rare religious art, including Mississippi River scenes of a Latter Day temple by the western artist Seth Eastman, the largest existing portrait collection painted by the folk artist and pattern maker named Sutcliffe Maudsley, and a portrait by David W. Rogers.
  • A hand-carved sun-faced white Mississippi limestone sculpture that is partner to the one that the Smithsonian Institution has displayed next to the original Old Glory flag.
  • Rare black and white photography of churches and other architecturally important buildings, like the seven earliest known photographs of the “The House of the Lord” in Kirtland, Ohio.
• Other books and collecting interests
  • The most important book written by Alexander Campbell, founder of the other Church of Christ, published at Boston, 1832; and a similar book by E. D. Howe printed in Painesville, Ohio. Even children’s books, such as the first popular Americanized edition of Mother Goose’s Melodies, 1833, with hand-colored engravings, and other unusual and frequently overlooked curiosities.
  • All materials consequential to early American religions, especially the earliest members of the Church of Christ organized in upstate New York in 1830.
  • Everything related to the history of religions in Vermont, 1791-1816; upstate New York, 1816-1831; Ohio, 1831-1837; Missouri, 1831-1839; Illinois, 1839-1848; Wisconsin, 1844-1856; Michigan and Lake Michigan (particularly the Islands of the Great Lakes), 1846-1856; and to a lesser extent Utah and the West, 1847-1857.
  • Everything written by or about the earliest Latter Day Saints, the primitive founders of a restored American religion, before the settlement of the West.
  • Fifty thousand related religious items: early maps, diaries, manuscripts, letters, minute books, newspapers, books, tracts, broadsides, association artifacts, sculptures, paintings, sketches, prints, early photographs, and so forth.