Description

Finally, the long-awaited third volume of the Silesian Profiles series!  This new volume includes over 300 pages and more than 120 profiles of immigrants to nineteenth-century Texas by John Warren and Katherine Korus Beard, Janet Dawson Ebrom, and Mary Ann Moczygemba Watson. This beautiful hardcover book is 8.5 x 11″ in high-quality black and white with several pages in color.

Click here to read the list of profiled SURNAMES in this book.

      

In a 2006 book review entitled, “The Silesians:  American Polonia’s Aristocracy,” Dr. John M. Grondelski of Arlington, Virginia, focused on the first two volumes of Silesian Profiles.  Following are four paragraphs of his original eleven-paragraph review with updates in brackets by the Silesian Profiles Committee as related to Silesian Profiles III:

The Weser, which docked in Galveston in December 1854, is the Polish Mayflower.  The families that disembarked from it to settle in Panna Maria and other places in Texas, were the Polish Pilgrims.

Using genealogical records, [this third volume] gives us a glimpse of just who were those Poles who settled in antebellum Texas.  Today, we call them “Poles,” but the book title points to their self-understanding: they were “Silesians,” from the region of Śląsk in today’s south central/southwest Poland.  Silesia is a crossroads of Polish and German culture.  Although Silesia remained contested territory through the World Wars, the loyalty of Silesians towards Poland eventually resulted in the majority of Silesia becoming part of Poland.

[This volume] presents individual families’ genealogical records.  There are basic biographical details for each person (birth, baptism, marriage, occupation, death), information about spouses, dates of immigration and naturalization, traces in censuses, and baptismal records for children.  A short one-to-two paragraph narrative [in some profiles] provides other available interesting facts about the family.  Where possible, 19th century black-and-white photographs are also reproduced.  To facilitate research, alternate German transliterations of families’ surnames, where applicable, are listed [e.g., Danyś/Danysch].  Lastly, because the [Silesian Texans] are our Weser blue bloods, [most profiles include] an illustration of the Texas equivalent of heraldry:  their cattle brands.

A labor of love and pride by the Silesian Profiles Committee produced this insight into the men and women who launched mass Polish immigration to the United States over a century and a half ago.  A fitting tribute to America’s Polish Mayflower, these books merit an honored place in Polish-American libraries.

Source:  Polish American Journal, p. 11, cols. 1-5, July 2006, vol. 95, #7.