In 2000, the U.S. Census found that people who were either directly from Poland, or who identified Polish as their principal ancestry, numbered about 9 million. These Polish-Americans live principally in Illinois, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, California, and Florida.
While the greatest number of Polish immigrants came to North America in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, Poles have been in the new world since Colonial days. Polish craftsmen joined the Jamestown colony in 1608, and during the American Revolution, a few Polish nobles joined the fray, including the well-known generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
Mass Emigration of Poles to North America
It wasn’t until the 1830s, however, that Poles arrived in greater numbers. This wave of immigrants to the U.S. numbered only a thousand or so, but they founded Polish American newspapers, literary societies, and political groups.
The much larger exodus of Poles to various other countries, which occurred starting around 1850, was a result of a number of forces within what had been the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The weakening of Poland, and the growing power of the Kingdom of Prussia, Habsburg Austrian Empire, and the Russian Empire led those three countries to reapportion much of the area starting in 1772, in what is now called the First Partition. From 1795, when the Third Partition of Poland occurred, until Independence in 1918, there was no country named Poland.
Emigration from German Poland
The first wave of Polish emigration, which started about 1850, was a result of domestic policies in the German part of partitioned Poland, where poverty, unemployment, and official discrimination aimed at Catholics set the stage. These early emigrants, numbering about 434,000, came from German-held Poland between 1850 and 1900.
One of the first groups to migrate to the United States was the group who came to Texas and built Panna Maria, a community about 60 miles from San Antonio. These settlers came from Upper Silesia in German-occupied Poland. Other farming communities made up of migrants from German Poland developed in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, and Michigan, and Minnesota. These early settlers were able to purchase farms because they arrived at a time when land was cheap, and they had the resources to develop their farms.
Emigration from Austrian Poland
In Galicia, the territory controlled by Austria, manufacturing decline, land shortages and crop failures prompted people to start leaving around 1880. They emigrated to Germany, Austria, France, and the United States.
The Austrian Poles, who arrived in America starting around the 1880s, did not find the same conditions that the earlier German Poles had. Land prices were higher, and market prices for grain, cattle, and other produce were low. Thus these immigrants took factory jobs or in industries such as mines.
Emigration from Russian Poland
Around this same time, industrial output in Russian Poland also began to decline, so that high unemployment rates there led to a mass exodus of laborers. These emigrants went to Germany, Denmark and France at first; later emigrants took bigger risks and fled to the Americas: Canada, the U.S., Argentina, and Brazil. From 1890 to 1920, about 805,000 Poles emigrated from the Russian-occupied territory.
Like the Poles from Austrian Poland, these immigrants could not easily turn to farming, even though many had been farmers in their native land. They, too, took jobs in factories and industrial plants upon their arrival.
What Does This Mean for Genealogists?
Using the time frame when one’s Polish ancestors arrived in the U.S., the locality of their settlement, and their occupations, genealogists seeking Polish roots can narrow the focus of their research. They may thus be able to locate that essential piece of the puzzle in genealogical research: the ancestor’s native territory and town.
Researchers looking for Polish ancestors who arrived in the U.S. after World War I have additional factors to consider.
Sources
Jason C. Booza, “A Profile of Polish Americans: Data from the 2000 U.S. Census,” Polish American Studies, vol. 64, No. 1 (Spring 2007)
John J. Bukowczyk, ed. Polish Americans and Their History: Community, Culture, and Politics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
John J. Bukowczyk, A History of the Polish Americans, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008.
Helena Znaniecka Lopata and Mary Patrice Erdmans, Polish Americans. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994.
James S. Pula, James S. Polish Americans: An Ethnic Community. New York: Twayne,1995.
Katharine Garstka - Katharine Garstka specializes in genealogical research and in historical and genealogical writing.
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