A Common Polish Man in Global Immigration

By: Alexander Colchiski

May 29, 2022

            The life of Mike Colchiski is a snapshot of social history which allows us to better understand the life of a Polish immigrant in the first decades of the twentieth century. Colchiski immigrated to the United States from the Austrian-Hungarian partition of Poland around the year 1903. His voyage to his new home was perhaps similar to the millions of Poles that left pre-WWI Poland to make a better life in the United States. It is estimated that some “2.5 million immigrants…came to the United States from Poland in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century.”[1]Colchiski was just one of those that made the trek to their new home thousands of miles away. In this essay, I will separate Colchiski’s life into four distinct eras: his birth to his journey to the United States, his arrival to the 1910 US census, establishing his family before 1920, the 1920s up to the Great Depression, and finally the last few years of his life after the 1930 census. I argue that Colchiski’s journey, while being a common story, is important to the history of Polish migration because it plucks out one of millions of the Polish stories and places it in a global microhistory. I confirm the work of Brian McCook, Helena Znaniecki Lopaka, and John J. Bukowczyk while placing Colchiski in the broader context of the Polonia—the Polish culture that sprang up around the world as a result of the Polish diaspora—culture. Colchiski’s story has no oral history and the family memories of him are scarce or completely absent. The documents I have found are the result of research done on ancestry.com and Colchiski’s 1924 naturalization record, which is his only surviving physical record. With the limited evidence I have and the work of scholars on Polish history, I will reconstruct Colchiski’s life as accurately as possible. 

The first two decades of Colchiski’s life are almost entirely unknown except for a few key details. Mike Colchiski was born on October 27, 1881, in the Galicia region of modern-day southern Poland and western Ukraine. [2]  Colchiski’s original Polish name is unknown to the Colchiski family, but Mieczyslaw Kaulczycki might have been his birth name because that is the name listed on his naturalization document. Due to Colchiski’s birth name being lost to history it is next to impossible to track his emigration journey out of Galicia. It is possible, however, to piece together probabilities of Colchiski’s life by studying the historiography of the Polish diaspora in the last years of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Historian Brian McCook asserts that “over the course of the nineteenth century, the growth in population in Polish lands led to a decrease in sustainable farms within the agricultural sector, contributing to the creation of a large, landless labor pool that drove down wages.”[3] Colchiski’s parents, Donald and Honorata, were most likely part of the poor laborers that were pulled out of the Austrian partition of Poland toward a place of economic security. While the factor of low wages and seasonal work pulled the Polish poor out of the region, the United States was experiencing economic growth which pushed poor Poles toward better economic means.[4] The migration may not have been as hard for Colchiski as some might assume. McCook expresses, “many Poles had prior migration experiences, as there existed a tradition of seasonal agricultural migration across the borders separating, Prussian Austria, and Russia.”[5] This is significant in Colchiski’s story because it might be difficult for some to understand why someone would just leave their homeland to another land thousands of miles away. But in Colchiski’s story, this may have been a common occurrence for him. Nothing is known about Colchiski’s nuclear family, yet we do know when his wife made the journey to the United States.

            Mary Colchiski immigrated to the United States in 1907, the same year that Mike and she got married, which indicates they had some connection in back in Galicia. Since Mike and Mary got married so quickly after her arrival two scenarios are most probable for the couple. First, Mike and Mary married after her arrival to make their marriage from Galicia official in by the United States government. This is the less likely of the two scenarios because they were both almost certainly Catholic and would have brought some sort of religious and secular documentation with them to prove their matrimony. The more likely scenario is that they married out of economic convivence once she arrived in the United States. According to sociologist Helena Znaniecki Lopata, “marriage was not a matter of love, but of an arrangement guaranteeing the best status and economic position for the unit.”[6] This means that their families back in Galicia may have known each other, and Mike left for the United States first to get established before hailing for Mary. Within the Colchiski family, it has been rumored that Mary may have come from a middle-class family but this is very unlikely because the classes above the peasants either stayed in Poland or “tended first to go to European countries.”[7]Additionally, since there was such a separation between the peasants and the rest of the Poles, Mary’s family would have certainly disagreed with her decision to emigrate to the United States to be with Mike. 

            The Colchiski family unit in 1910 provides a great example of Polish life in the first decade of the twentieth century, and it provides and incredible amount of information about Mike and Mary. For example, Mike is listed as the head of his house. Married men being listed as the head of the house was common. The Colchiski household was a busy one. The census lists twelve individuals living in one home. The Colchiski nuclear family (listed as Colcheski) consisted of Mike, Mary, and their two daughters. The other eight members of the household were other Polish immigrants, all of whom were single and male. Their ages ranged from twenty-two to forty-six. This confirms McCook’s claim that “during the first decade of the twentieth century, 46 percent of Polish households took in boarders.”[8] Married Polish women almost never worked outside of the home, and much of their time was taken up by keeping the home in order and doing domestic chores, including for boarders.[9] Mary tended not just to the needs of her family but for her boarders as well. Mary’s domestic labor possibly came with a fee to the boarders by way of rent, but living in a family home was preferable to the “over…crowed and authoritarian company dormitory” that was provided by industrial companies.[10] Mary is an example of Bukowczyk’s assertion that “Polish wives kept the household accounts [and] would have ‘made’ money for the family by saving it. Moreover, any money collected from boarders and lodgers was, in effect, her ‘wage’ since she washed their clothes, cooked their food, and cleaned up after them.”[11] Mike and the male boarders in the home were all railroad laborers. And, according to the census, all the men were from Austria and spoke Slovenian. The significance of the census taker writing Austria and not Poland will be discussed momentarily. The social spheres of men and women were drastically different. The social sphere of Polish women was discussed by way of Mary, for Mike, however, his social sphere was quite different. 

            Mike and the male boarders almost certainly worked and socialized with little family interaction. Lopata claims that men sought “the company of other men” by way of “alcohol as a means of recreation and emotional release.”[12]Alcohol was an important aspect of male Polish social interaction, thus it is easy to imagine that Colchiski, and possibly his male boarders, would arrive home from a tavern intoxicated. While there is no direct evidence that Colchiski engaged in such activities, Lopata makes it clear that it was a common trait of Polish masculinity to leave the woman to work on domestic affairs while the man engaged in such behavior. These masculine spaces may have been more than a place for the consumption of alcohol. The taverns occupied by Polish men may have also served as a space to organize. Lopata asserts that “the lower class Polish Americans tended to be limited in the geographical space their social life covered…men worked for large American organizations but generally refrained from active participation in their groups (even in unions), preferring their own ethnic associations.”[13] This means that if Mike was of the lower class of Polish American, which he almost certainly was because of the evidence from the 1910 census, he may not have had the ability to expand his social circle and ethnic association beyond a local tavern frequented by other Polish American lower class men. 

            The census taker marked Mike and Mary as literate in Slovenian (Polish) and being born in Austria, which provides us with evidence of pre-World War I geopolitics. Lopata sheds light on why the place of birth for an unknown immigrant and his native tongue demonstrates the importance of a simple census form. The place of birth is different from a national origin because the place of birth section on the census was to indicate the political state in which the person was born. A “national culture society,” according to Lopata, is the “common and distinct secular, literary culture and an independent organization functioning for the preservation, growth, and expansion of this culture.”[14] The political state, by contrast, is the legal system and government which controls the people of a defined geographical area.[15] Additionally, as has been established, Mike and Mary came from the peasantry which “were generally anti-intellectual,” and since the Polish national culture was formed and fostered by the nobility and intelligentsia, Mike and Mary may not have felt a since of Polish national identity and being labeled as Austrian may not have been cause for concern. This is consistent with Bukowczyk’s claim that the Austrians successfully drove a wedge between the Polish peasantry and the Polish elite. This “forestall[ed] the development of a broadly based Polish nationalist movement.”[16] The Slavic people make up several groups of people of distinct national cultures, including the Poles, but because the lower-class Polish Americans—especially the first generation of Austrian Polish immigrants—were not strongly connected with their Polish identity, they may have accepted being labeled as Slavonian or Austrian.[17] In any case, the fact that the Poles living in the Colchiski home were labeled as Austrian speaking Slovenian is a testament to the political states that existed in pre-World War I Europe. It is also evidence in the way in which the US federal government conducted its census taking in 1910. The evolution of census taking will be evidenced as the 1920 and 1930 census records are explored later on in this paper. In 1910, the Colchiskis lived in Hollidaysburg, a small railroad town in central Pennsylvania, but by 1920 they had moved to New Castle close to the Ohio border. 

            By 1920, Mike and Mary were raising four children, three girls and one boy, in New Castle, but they had not moved beyond the life of living in a small house with boarders. The 1920 census confirms that Mike and Mary lived with two middle-aged Russian immigrants and Mike’s mother, Honorata. After World War I ended in 1918, Poland formed into a political state after over a century of occupation by foreign governments. President Woodrow Wilson called for “an independent Polish State [to] be erected which should include the territories by indisputably Polish populations.”[18] This impacted the way in which the census takers would record the place of birth on the census. What is interesting about the 1920 census—at least for the New Castle area—is that the place of birth for the immigrants of the Colchiski home was either “Russia” or “Galicia.” This makes little logical sense because Galicia was not a political state in 1919, 1920, or 1921. Galicia was incorporated in the Polish state. This indicates that when the census was being taken the area of Galicia was in the midst of great turmoil and it was unclear if the region would form its own political state or not. Additionally, this indicates that Mike, his mother, and Mary were not deeply connected to the Polish state or Polish nationalism. This could be the result of being peasant emigrants and never feeling a deep connection to the Polish nation, which was not an uncommon thing to happen to the lower classes. The native tongue for the Colchiski household was Polish, even for Mike’s children. The significance of Mike’s children being native Polish speakers will be explored momentarily. Everyone in the home was able to speak English except for Honoretta and Mike’s son Theodor, who later because Thaddeus. It is unclear at what point Mike and Mary learned to speak English, but according to the 1910 census both were completely literate in Polish. This shows that prior to immigrating they had at least some formal education in the Austrian partitioned Poland. When they arrived in the United States, perhaps they took some sort of English classes to better fit into American society. 

            The three Colchiski daughters and the one Colchiski son likely had diverging paths of formal education and careers. It is known that Thaddeus (Ted), the only Colchiski son, graduated high school in 1934 from New Castle High School. He would go on to have a successful career in the US Army and served in World War II. He was exceptionally ambitious going so far as to contact US representative Charles Eckert of Pennsylvania to assist him in United States Military Academy candidacy.[19] Ted’s ambition to attend such a prestigious university is way outside of the norm for Polish Americans of the 1930s. Lopata makes the case that “the idea of higher education was foreign to Polonia’s first or second generation youth.”[20] “Higher education” to the Polish youth was not college or university but schooling that surpassed the required age and grade level by American law, which for Pennsylvania was sixteen years old, or a child completed sixth grade was fourteen years or older and employed.[21] Ted’s graduation from high school was already a serious feat because the Great Depression had impacted education so greatly.[22] Ted’s three sisters, on the other hand, may not have ever been given the chance to attend higher education. 

There is no evidence suggesting that Ted’s sisters graduated high school or attended university, but if we use Ted’s future wife Amelia—also of Polish immigrant parents—as an example of the working-class Polish girls education history, we find that Ted’s sisters likely did not move beyond the eighth grade. According to the Colchiski family, Amelia never graduated high school, and from a surviving letter from Ted to Amelia during his stint in the Army we see that she was not completely fluent in English, a side-effect of her missing her later years of education. Additionally, Amelia worked as a live-in domestic worker for Clarence and Josephine Patterson of New Castle according to the 1940 U.S. Census. The census describes Amelia as having never attended high school. Amelia’s is an example of the common Polish girl and woman’s early life path. The 1940 census also confirms that Ted’s sister, Leona, did not move past the seventh grade. Taken together Amelia and Leona confirm Lopata’s argument that “the children of Polonia began working at an early age to help the family in its endless struggle for money,” and this was especially true during the Depression.[23] These examples of second-generation Polish children are a compelling case study of the role education played in Polonia, and the difference education played between the two genders. 

It is unclear to what extent education was important to Mike Colchiski because there is no surviving evidence for any claim, yet we know that Colchiski worked his entire life up to his death in 1935. For reasons that are unclear, Colchiski was living in Cleveland, Ohio in 1930 as a lodger in a Polish home. Back in New Castle, Mary was supporting two of their daughters and their son. There is no explanation for Mike’s departure to Cleveland in the 1920s except to perhaps find work and maybe have intentions to move the family west once he became established. But even this does not explain why Mary was living in home in New Castle that was owned by the couple while Mike was living in Cleveland. What is known is that at some point in the first half of the 1930s Mike returned to New Castle where he died in January 1935. Mary lived in the same home from the 1930 census until 1968. 

In conclusion, the Colchiski family history of emigration and immigration is an interesting case study of the Polish diaspora and a microhistory of Polonia. Mike Colchiski might have been just one of millions of Poles to have immigrated to the United States, but his story assists in confirming the work of scholars of Polish immigration and Polonia. The documents of Colchiski’s life, before and after his immigration, are scarce but they provide enough evidence to add to the incredible amount of research that has been done or is ongoing on Polish American history. 

Bibliography

Bukowczyk, John J. A History of the Polish Americans. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008.

Colchiski, Alexander. “Gallery 3.” Alex’s Writing and Family History. Accessed May 29, 2022. https://alexcolchiski.com/colchiski-family-archive.

Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: A History of Poland. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Helena Znaniecka Lopata. Polish Americans : Status Competition in an Ethnic Community. 1st ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976.

Herring, George. From Colony to Superpower. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

US Department of the Interior, Office of Education. “Compulsory School Attendance Laws and Their Administration,” Keesecker, Ward, Deffenbaugh, Walter, 1935. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED542358.pdf.

Koning, Lydia. “Education in the 1930’S.” Medium. The Thirties, December 9, 2015. https://medium.com/the-thirties/education-in-the-1930-s-bc0e4b94fb2d.

Lukowski, Jerzy, and Hubert Zawadzki. A Concise History of Poland. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

McCook, Brian. The Borders of Integration: Polish Migrants in Germany and the United States, 1870-1924. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.

Radzilowski, John. The Eagle & the Cross : A History of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, 1873-2000. Boulder: East European Monographs, 2003.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Slav.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, March 1, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slav.

National WWI Museum and Memorial. “The Fourteen Points,” May 31, 2019. https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/peace/fourteen-points.

[1] John J Bukowczyk, A History of the Polish Americans (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008), xxxviii.

[2] Galicia in this essay should not be confused with the Galicia of modern-day Spain.

[3] Brian McCook, The Borders of Integration: Polish Migrants in Germany and the United States, 1870-1924 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011), 18.

[4] McCook, 18. 

[5] McCook, 19. 

[6] Helena Znaniecka Lopata, Polish Americans: Status Competition in an Ethnic Community, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 20.

[7] Lopata, 20. 

[8] McCook, 31

[9] Lopata, 99. 

[10] McCook, 31. 

[11] John J Bukowczyk, A History of the Polish Americans (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 25.

[12] Lopata, 99. 

[13] Lopata, 103. 

[14] Lopata, 4. 

[15] Lopata, 4. 

[16] Bukowczyk, 8. 

[17] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Slav,” in Encyclopædia Britannica, March 1, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slav.

[18] “The Fourteen Points,” National WWI Museum and Memorial, May 31, 2019, https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/peace/fourteen-points.

[19] See the Colchiski family archives for primary sources concerning Ted and letters he received from Eckert. Alexander Colchiski, “Gallery 3,” Alex’s Writing and Family History, accessed May 29, 2022, https://alexcolchiski.com/colchiski-family-archive.

[20] Lopata, 92. 

[21] US Department of the Interior, Office of Education, “Compulsory School Attendance Laws and Their Administration,” Ward Keesecker, Walter Deffenbaugh, 1935, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED542358.pdf, 12,16.

[22] Lydia Koning, “Education in the 1930’S,” Medium (The Thirties, December 9, 2015), https://medium.com/the-thirties/education-in-the-1930-s-bc0e4b94fb2d.

[23] Lopata, 92.