204 EMIGRACJA
trees, and everyone can pick their fill... All this is written on paper, and stamped. The
organist has read it twice.^4
Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians from the Polish lands jostled with the main-
stream of Polish-speaking Catholic peasants who crowded the westbound rail-
way platforms and the decks of packet boats out of Hamburg, Danzig, and
Riga. Regular agencies ferried their clients to a new life beyond the sunset. Not
uncommonly, peasants from neighbouring localities would form a group, put
themselves in the charge of a priest, and depart en masse. In 1854, for example,
one of the earliest Polish groups to leave Silesia founded the first Polish parish in
Texas. Inspired by German colonists from the same Prussian province, who
were already settling the rich lands of the south Texas plain, one hundred and
fifty emigrants assembled at Oppeln (Opole) under the orders of a Franciscan
friar, the Revd Leopold Moczygeba (1824—91), took a ship at Bremer-haven,
and sailed for New Orleans. They carried a few personal belongings, a few agri-
cultural implements, and a large wooden cross for erection in their new home-
land. In the following Spring, at Panna Maria, now in Karnes County fifty miles
from San Antonio, Father Moczyggba made the first entry in the parish register:
'Pauline Bronder, AD MDCCCLV, die nona Februarii, nata et a me infrascripto eadem
die baptizata est filla legitima Simon Bronder et Juliae Pilarczyk, conjugorum
Catholicorum, cui nomen Paulina impo-situm est. Matrina Julia Kyrish. Ita testor,
Fr. L. B. M. Moczygeha.'^5 *The infant Paulina, lawful daughter of Simon and Julia Bronder, godchild of
Julia Kyrish, could look forward to a life which her forebears had never imag-
ined.
These economic emigrants differed markedly from their political counter-
parts. They were poor and they were largely illiterate, overwhelmingly peas-
ants, small craftsmen, or miners. They left their Polish homes deliberately,
wilfully turning their backs on a homeland which had offered them little but
poverty and oppression. They possessed very little awareness of Polish cultural
and political traditions. Most of them never set foot in Warsaw or Cracow, and
had certainly never benefited from what was to be found there. They went
straight from their Polish village to a factory in Essen or to a farm in Kansas.
When they died, they could not leave their children much of their Polish her-
itage—just the memories of their village, their country dialect, their religion, a
few peasant songs and dances, a crumpled wedding costume in the national
style, and in the cupboard a naive souvenir marked 'Kalwaria Zebrzydowska'
or 'Jasna Gora'.
Statistical information on the Polish emigration is not easily available.
Official records in the nineteenth century usually mention emigrants' citizen-
- 'AD 1855, on 9 February, a legitimate daughter was born to Simon Bronder and Julia
Pilarczyk, Catholic man and wife, and on the same day was baptized by me the undersigned,
and given the name of Paulina. The godmother was Julia Kyrish. Witness thereto, Brother
L. B. M. Moczygeba.'