The First Polish Americans Silesian Settlements in Texas by T. Lindsay Baker

Winner of the Kate Broocks Bates Award and
Coral Horton Tullis Award

Small farmers and peasants from Poland's Upper Silesia region made their way to south-central Texas in the mid-1850s. This award-winning history documents their American experience as they founded the first organized communities of Polish immigrants in the United States.

Author T. Lindsay Baker, who conducted some of his research while a Fulbright lecturer at the Technical University of Wroclaw, begins by providing background information on the social and economic conditions that spurred immigration. He then describes their founding of the community of Panna Maria, where the Reverend Leopold Moczygemba led the formation of St. Mary's, the first Polish Catholic church in the United States.

The Civil War, some hostile Anglos, droughts, and other difficulties of frontier life did not lay waste to the settlers' way of life. As Baker shows, the Silesian settlements of Texas had a far-reaching impact; for example, Peter Kiolbassa left Texas after the Civil War and settled in Chicago, where he helped establish that city's first Polish Catholic community and entered politics, becoming the first Polish-born state legislator in America. Baker also points out that the Polish Texans continued to retain many elements of their regional folk culture into the late twentieth century.

"Thanks to a series of interviews, he has . . . preserved many easily lost details in the development of the oldest Polish American settlements."—Polish American Studies

T. LINDSAY BAKER is the author of many books on western and Texas history and material culture. He teaches museum studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

---

The First Polish Americans
ISBN 0-89096-725-3 paper $19.95

LC 78-6373. 6x9. 320 pp. 35 b&w photos. 2 maps. Bib. Index.
Multicultural Topics. Texas History.

Publication Date: August 1996.

---

Terms of order and other ways to order