Thomas L. Hollowak, From Cracow to Polish Town: The History of a Polish Enclave in the Weir Creek Ministerial District, New Kent County, Virginia, Baltimore: Historyk Press 2020

The American South in general, and Virginia in particular, are generally not associated with Polonia.That's somewhat unfair, as Poles appeared to have been in, and organized the first strike for equal labor rights at Jamestown, Virginia, ca 1620, and the first mass emigration of Poles to America settled in Panna Maria, Texas, in 1854.Stefan Nesterowicz, writing for the Polonia press in the early 1900s and republished in 2007 as Travel Notes, mentioned Polish settlements in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.Even West Virginia attracted Slavonic immigrants, especially to mines and steel mills in the western part of the state: see William Gorby's Wheeling's Polonia.Still, for much of American Polonia, Wheeling and Baltimore were its southern border.Nevertheless, the paradox of Polish emigration to the United States (in contrast to Canada, where Sir Clifford Sifton was recruiting farmers to fill the prairies) was that the rural Polish peasant became the urban Polonian industrial worker of the American Northeast and Midwest.Efforts to direct Polish immigrants to America to farmswhether to keep them from urban "corruption" or to promote ethnic "colonies," such as those John Radzi owski has researched in Minnesota or those in Nebraska or the aforementioned Arkansas -were never hugely successful.In the early 20 th century, a similar farm/colonization effort was attempted in the Tidewater region of central/east Virginia.Today that region is associated with Virginia colonial history (Williamsburg, Yorktown), education (the College of William and Mary), the military (especially the U.S. Navy at Norfolk), and vacations (Virginia Beach).Interstate Highway 64 now provides good transportation.A century or so ago, the area was less accessible and more rural.Adam Sturtz, a Polish farmer-turned-entrepreneur, began advertising in the Polonian press to attract immigrants to buy farm land in the Tidewater region.Other Poles had come to work at factories in Yorktown, and a New York-based priest was also promoting local farm settlements among immigrants.A handful of Polish immigrants appears to have been scattered across eastern Virginia.According to Hollowak, in the early 20 th century Polish Franciscans from Baltimore had begun using St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Fredericksburg (a town about 80 km southwest of Washington) as a base to minister to pockets of Polish immigrants in Stafford, Mecklenburg, York, King and Queen, King William, Caroline, and New Kent counties as well as the Virginia capital, Richmond.Except for

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