Polish Immigrants to Chicago
In the 1850 U.S. Census, only 495 individuals (72 women) were counted of Polish origin in the whole United States. In ten years that number rose to 7,298; 309 here in Chicago. In 1864 Polish families formed the patronage of St. Stanislaus Kostka and bought land for a church—about a mile from St. Mary of the Angels towards downtown. A Polish diocesan priest, Fr. Joseph Juszkiewicz, administered the parish.
Like many other nationalities, Polish immigrants saw America as the “Land of Opportunity” while maintaining their national heritage and their strong faith in God. Before the immigration influx, the Bucktown area of Chicago was mostly open fields used to pasture goats and sheep (the Polish people called male goats “bucks”). Many people fled war-torn Poland in the 1830s to come to the United States. They first settled in area that was Jefferson Township and Holstein (west and east of Western Avenue between North Avenue and Devon). Later Bucktown became the focus of the Polish Community. Germans, Irish, and Lithuanians had also settled here.
In 1864—the year St. Stanislaus Kostka was formed—Annunciation Parish was established to serve the English-speaking Irish Catholics who lived along the Chicago River. In 1874 it moved to the corner of Paulina and Wabansia, just a block south of our St. Mary of the Angels Church and was closed and razed in 1978. The Lithuanians built St. Michael’s Catholic Church on Wabansia, between Paulina and Marshfield, in 1904 to serve the more than 2,000 Lithuanians each Sunday (St. Michael’s was merged with Annunciation in 1970 and torn down).
The pastor of Holy Name Cathedral, Fr. Joseph Roles, went to Rome and approached Fr. Jerome Kajsiewicz CR superior general of the newly founded Congregation of the Resurrectionists, asking him to supply priests for Chicago’s Polish and Bohemian immigrants. Fr. Kajsiewicz visited Chicago in 1871 and he met with Bishop Foley who formally agreed to entrust the Polish missions in Chicago to the Resurrectionists for the next ninety-nine years. The Resurrectionists then took possession of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish.
[Insert Fr. Jerome Kajsiewicz CR detail from Sacred Heart chapel painting]
The real influx of Polish—along with Lithuanian and Italian Catholics—began in earnest in the late 1880s, and as immigrants poured into the city the bishop of Chicago had to establish more Polish churches: first was St. Josaphat in 1884 and then St. Hedwig in 1888. These were followed by St. John Cantius (1892), Holy Trinity (1893), St. Stanislaus Bishop-Martyr (a mission church from 1893–1901), and St. Hyacinth (1894).
