A New Waverly

In the late 1860’s, a group of men, women, and children crossed the stormy Atlantic, to try to find a brighter future in the land of opportunity. Spurred on by the greed of southern plantation owners these immigrants would, in the following years, build not only a new life for themselves, but also a small corner of America, New Waverly. This settlement would soon surpass and outlive the town that the immigrants were originally meant to bolster.

Polish Texans

America has always been a country of immigrants. For Texas, that is also true. During the 19th century, especially the latter half, America and Texas experienced unprecedented levels of immigration. One group, in particular, was the Polish, who from 1831-1870 experienced the Great Emigration, a massive flight from their troubled homeland. After the unsuccessful Polish Insurrection of 1863, many Polish citizens were happy to leave, and search for a better life in a new land.[1]

In Texas, the immigration of the Poles was chiefly done in two waves. The first wave of Polish immigrants settled in and around the settlement of Panna Maria, which holds the distinction of being the first organized settlement of Polish immigrants in America. The Panna Maria wave began in 1854, before both the Polish uprising, and the American Civil War.[2] These two events had a massive impact upon the second wave of Polish immigrants coming to Texas. Many of these brave souls started in the small settlement of Waverly in the late 1860s before venturing to other areas in the state.[3]

Waverly Emigration Society

The Civil War contributed to the second wave of Polish immigration in Texas, and in some ways created it, by vastly changing the labor situation in the South. The freeing of the slaves created a labor shortage on large farms. In response to this, on September 19, 1866, a group of twelve of the well-to-do planters who lived around Waverly gathered together in the general store owned by one James Meyer Levy to discuss ways in which new labor could be found. At that meeting, the Waverly Emigration Society was founded, and a decision was made.[4]

The solution that they hit upon was to send emissaries overseas to recruit suitable “foreign laborers” to work in the fields, replacing the slaves that they had so recently “lost” to freedom. Each planter made a request for whatever number of workers he needed. Special skills, if required, were also requested at this time. Levy, being Polish, was commissioned to go to Poland, and recruit a hundred and fifty workers to return with him to Waverly.[5]

Levy

Levy, the agent, was far from what one would imagine as the typical immigrant. A Polish Jew who had left Europe in 1848, Meyer had arrived in America in 1850, and had been in Texas trading on the rivers until the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, reportedly, however, Levy received a Letter of Marque from the Confederate government, and became a privateer. After the war, he sold his ship, and used the proceeds to establish himself in the area of Waverly, though accounts vary as to whether his store was in Waverly itself or the nearby town of Navasota. Levy was chosen to go to Poland because he was born there, obviously, and his experience with the sea may have been another factor, but it is quite interesting that the Waverly Emigration Society sent a man who was for all intents and purposes a pirate to find workers.[6]

Agreement

The contracts that were written out for the laborers were a system of nearly indentured servitude, where immigrants’ passages over were paid for by an outside entity, and after arrival, the cost of the journey was worked off. In the case of the immigrants brought to Texas by the Waverly Immigration society, the planters of the Waverly Immigration Society paid for these immigrants’ passages, in part equal to the proportion of the immigrants they wished to hire. The planters also would provide the immigrants with a “comfortable cabin” and food. Men would be paid $90, $100, and $110 dollars for their first, second and third years working for the planter respectively. Women would be paid twenty dollars less a year than the men for their work.[7]

In return, the workers were to be “faithful laborers” and work for a period of three years, and out of their wages to repay the planter for the cost of their journey to the New World, before their contracts were complete, and they were released to do what they willed with their lives. Parents were responsible, also, for both the traveling expenses and all the other costs of their children, from food to clothing, which they had to pay out of their earnings.[8]

These contracts seem very slanted in favor of the landowners who wrote them. They basically are for indentured servitude, a labor form which is normally classed as near slavery. Why the immigrants would have agreed to them is unknown. The contracts were written in both Polish and English, however, given the time period and societal background of the immigrants, whether or not they could read or understand them is quite questionable, and, again, the agent who recruited them had been a privateer, so whether what was actually in the contracts was what the immigrants were told is unknown.[9]

On the other hand, the immigrants were getting passage to America, and earning the money to afford something like that would have been extremely difficult. No one in Poland would have afforded the same sort of credit to someone about to leave for the other side of the world, so they may have simply seen it as their only chance, and been grateful for the opportunity.

Arrival

Levy sailed to Poland and fulfilled his charge, returning to the Texas coast on April 9th of 1867 with a party of forty-five families, or 143 Polish immigrants. Willing workers were no trouble for him to find, as discontent in Poland after the Insurrection of 1863 made a new start and a new home seem a very welcome prospect to the Polish peasants tired of Russian Imperial rule. In May, the party had finally returned to Waverly, and began to settle in and around the area that would later become New Waverly.[10]

The first recorded was an 18 year old man named William Sikorski. As well as Sikorski, other early settlers were Jacob Sutniak , with his wife Pauline and their two daughters, and Al Levandowski, wife Catherine, and two children. All of these early immigrants listed their location as Huntsville, though whether they actually lived in the town is doubtful, as many people in the area listed that as their location simply because it was the largest and best-known place in the area.[11]

Early Settlement

In the early years, the Polish immigrants worked as agricultural labor on the farms in the surrounding area. Many settled in a particular area about ten miles from Waverly, which would in time become New Waverly. Others, however, spread out, some to Anderson, others Navasota, and other such towns.[12] Where they lived, for those first forty-five families, largely depended on where the farm that they had contracted with was located.

Immigrants from Poland looking for a place to settle or following relatives began to group around those already established. As more and more arrived, and those who had originally come with Levy finished out their contracts, what had been simply an offshoot of Waverly had become more of a town in it’s own right. This New Waverly would serve as a base for the further Polish settlement of East Texas, to areas such as Brenham and La Grange.[13]

In 1869, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Parish was established, the first Polish Catholic Church in East Texas under Father Felix Orzechowski, though the parishioners would wait another five years before the actual church was built. Orzechowski was a member of the Resurrectionist Congregation, a group of Catholic Priests formed in the 1830s by three Polish priests living in exile in Paris. The Kochanowitz brothers became influential traders in the area, as well as others who helped secure the Poles’

status in the area.[14]

Rise and Fall

In 1870, the citizens of Waverly refused the Houston and Great Northern Railroad right-of-way through the town. Instead, the railroad laid tracks to the west, and created Waverly Station in the area that the Poles had settled. As so often happens, the town that feared the railroad would destroy it was destroyed by that refusal. Many residents of Waverly moved to Waverly Station, which soon changed its name to New Waverly. As time passed, Waverly continued to shrink, but New Waverly continued to expand.[15]

Though it never grew to a large city, New Waverly is still a pleasant little town, while Waverly, now remembered as Old Waverly, is a ghost town, where little more than a cemetery remains. The few wealthy farmers who met that afternoon in a room in a small general store could not have foreseen how the laborers that they required could create a thriving community which would shift the cultural landscape of Texas.

Notes

[1] R.F. Leslie, Reform and Insurrection in Russian Poland (London: The Athlone Press, 1963), chp. 9.

 [2] Edward Dworaczyck, The First Polish Colonies of America in Texas (San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1936), chp. 1.

 [3] Ibid, 157-158.

 [4] Verna B. Baines, “Genealogical Society honor Polish Families in East Texas,” The Huntsville Item, December 9, 2001, Heritage Happenings.

 [5] T. Lindsay Baker, The Polish Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1982), 62-63.

 [6] T. Lindsay Baker, The Polish Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1982), 61-62.

 [7] Agreement to Serve as Labourer, The Waverly Emigration Society, signed by Rozalio Kaminska Aug. 14, 1867, Vertical Files, Thomason Special Collection, Sam Houston State University.

 [8] Ibid

 [9] Ibid

 [10] Verna B. Baines, “Genealogical Society honor Polish Families in East Texas,” The Huntsville Item, December 9, 2001, Heritage Happenings.

 [11] Francis Klinkacek, St. Joseph’s Parish Centennial 1869-1969 (New Waverly: St. Joseph’s Parish, 1969), 17.

 [12] Francis Klinkacek, St. Joseph’s Parish Centennial 1869-1969 (New Waverly: St. Joseph’s Parish, 1969), 17.

 [13] Ibid

 [14] Ibid

[15] Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "New Waverly, Texas" http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/NN/hln14.html

 

Friday, November 12, 2010