"Upper Silesia, the homeland of the mid-nineteenth-century Polish immigrants to Texas, had been separated from the Polish state for five centuries when the peasants began their migration.  In the fourteenth century it passed from Poland to Bohemia and subsequently was held by the Hungarian Kings and Habsburg rulers until Frederick the Great acquired the territory in 1742. Despite the long alien control of Upper Silesia, the Polish language, Polish traditions, and the Roman Catholic religion survived among its peasantry (4)"

Excerpted from the book The First Polish Americans: Silesian Settlements in Texas written by T. Lindsay Baker, published by Texas A & M University Press, College Station, copyright 1979, page 3.

Map of Silesia. Click to enlarge. © copyright 1996, FEEFHS, all rights reserved

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