Jan Malina was the youngest of 13 children who were born to Josef Malina and Anna Luptak in Blatnica, Slovakia. Only 7 children lived to adulthood. They were Maria (who married Jan Hrivnak), Josef, Anna (who married Unknown Dianis and Joseph Kubik), Zuzana (who married John Duris) Juraj, and Matus.

Jan came to America for the first time in 1894 and worked on the Chicago World’s Fair, which opened in 1895. He made 5 trips back to Slovakia when his mother sent him letters saying she is dying and her final wish is to gaze at his face once last time. Each time when he arrived back in Blatnica, his mother would recover and try to get him to marry a girl in Blatnica and stay there. But he wanted to be back in America where his brothers Josef, Juraj, and Matus were. Each time he went back to Slovakia and returned, he had to find a new job.

He worked on a farm in Madison, Wisconsin and at a gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Once when he returned to the Chicago area and couldn’t find a job, he and several other Slovak men used all their money to buy a one-way train ticket to Texas, where they heard there were homesteading opportunities provided by the railroad. When they were in Louisiana they got off the train during a stop and ran into some other Slovaks who were returning from Texas. “Texas is just full of snakes,” the returning Slovaks said. Jan and his group decided they didn’t want to go to Texas if it was full of snakes. But they didn’t have any money for a return ticket. So they walked back to Chicago from Louisiana following the train tracks, scavenging and working for food as they walked. While crossing the Mississippi River, a train came and they had to hang over the side of the track, dangling until the train passed. Then they had to swing their way back up.