The First Polish Americans: Silesian Settlements in Texas

This award-winning history was the first to provide a detailed and well-documented account of the first organized Polish immigrant communities in America. Author T. Lindsay Baker, who conducted some of his research while a Fulbright lecturer at the Technical University of Wrocaw, tells the story of the settlements founded in Texas in the mid-1850s.

As residents of Upper Silesia, the ethnic Poles bound for Texas had long retained their own language and adhered to their Catholic faith, despite...