Polish Settlement For Free

Most Polish immigrants flocked to industrial cities to work in factories, steel mills, slaughterhouses, and foundries. Chicago became the primary destination for most Polish immigrants, with an estimated population of 400,000 Polish immigrants by 1920.

A total of 1.9 million Polish-Americans call Chicago and its suburbs home. It's no wonder that Chicago calls itself the largest Polish city in the world, outside of Poland itself.

Two Polish groups arrived from Canada shortly before 1860 and settled in Wisconsin and Michigan. The Poles who came after the Civil War went primarily to the Middle Atlantic and Midwest states, especially to New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska and Missouri.

This farming settlement was named Panna Maria, which means ?Virgin Mary? in Polish, and was built on the plateau above the junction of the San Antonio River and Cibolo Creek. The Polish settlers built homes and a church on this land and quickly began planting crops and raising livestock.

Polish Americans are most heavily concentrated in the Upper Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States. Wisconsin has the largest Polish American population, with 481,126 people identifying as Polish, making up 8.15% of the state's population.

But it was a series of disasters in the 1850s in Poland that created the real impetus for significant immigration to Texas. Severe weather, a poor economy, floods, lack of food, epidemics of typhoid and cholera; all these spurred interest in a better life elsewhere.

By 1911, 90% of the foreign born Polish farmers and 55.7% of Polish agricultural laborers resided in ten states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Of this number, 63.4% resided in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Poland has never had any formal colonial territories, but over its history the acquisition of such territories has at times been contemplated, though never attempted.

Poland vanished from the map of Europe until 1918; Napoleon created a Grand Duchy of Warsaw from Prussian Poland in 1807, but it did not survive his defeat. A Polish Republic was proclaimed on November 3, 1918.

Immigrants believed that America offered jobs and hopes that problem-ridden Poland did not offer. With nation-wide economic troubles, famines, and religious persecution back at home, immigrants fled to America with hopes of finding prosperity and acceptance.