The Poles in Jamestown
As America celebrates the 400th anniversary this year of the founding
of Jamestown, VA, few people know that among the earliest group of
settlers were several Polish artisans brought over to help England improve
its status as a world maritime power. This small group of enterprising
individuals quickly won the admiration of Jamestown’s leaders. In addition
to being some of America’s earliest artisans, they soon garnered a few
“firsts” that carved an important place for them in the development of
American democracy. The Polish craftsmen were the first to win the right to
vote in America having been enfranchised by Virginia Company officials in
1619 after they conducted the first labor strike on American soil. Their
challenge successfully made them free men, and with their freedom came
the right to vote in Virginia’s elections in the newly created Virginia General
Assembly.
Their persistence in demanding equal rights set in motion the
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process that would eventually transform an English colony into an America
commonwealth.
For the roots of American democracy began with the
meeting of the first General Assembly of Virginia, which embraced not just
the rule of common law, but extolled the concepts of free enterprise and
cultural diversity that this minority group represented.
According to the colony’s larger than life leader Captain John Smith,
“eight foreigners” (Poles and Germans) arrived in 1608 on Jamestown’s
second supply ship. Smith was familiar with these cultures, reputedly fluent
in one or more Central European languages.
Before Smith arrived in
America at the age of 27, he had already fought as a mercenary soldier in
Hungary against the Ottoman Empire, then the Muslim superpower of the
day. Captured, he was sold as a slave in Turkey, but later escaped by
beating his master to death with a threshing bat. His humble yeoman origins
in Lincolnshire, England, and his ability to survive against almost
impossible odds shaped a worldview which he held for the rest of his life.
Opposing the constraints imposed by the English class system, he argued
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that individuals prove themselves based on merit, not social standing. “Here
every man may be master of his owne labour and land,” he wrote, insisting
that class distinctions were invalid on this side of the Atlantic. Smith’s
compatriots at Jamestown, however, differed with him.
As English
gentlemen, they were unaccustomed to physical labor and even during the
colony’s “starving time,” the winter of 1609-1610, some refused to work.
Smith did not ignore their behavior, referring to them as “gluttonous
loiterers,” and “tender educates.” Even if all hands were on board, though,
it’s still unlikely that the entire group of 104 original settlers would have
survived in a climate of deadly heat, Indian attacks and epidemics. As early
as the winter of 1607, only six months after the arrival of the first ship,
almost 70 percent had perished.
In the case of the Poles, given all the uncertainties of a long ocean
voyage to an unknown land, why did they come? The few Poles who sailed
in 1608 on Jamestown’s second supply ship may have met Smith earlier in
Poland. Appreciating their talents as artisans, the Englishman might have
invited them to join the colonization venture, realizing that the manufacture
of glass, pitch, tar and building materials would be a huge asset to England’s
competitiveness.
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As the Poles and Smith were to soon learn—they shared much in
common:
Immigrating from closed societies with neither money nor
pedigree (much like Smith), they were self-made men with the hope of
making their mark on the new social venture. Save for their names, we
know very little about them, but their honesty and industry were quickly
noticed. In comparing them to their English counterparts, Smith wrote,
“They (the English) never did know what dayes worke was: except the
Dutch-men and Poles and some dozen others.” He may have been indebted
to them in still another way: most likely they were the very same individuals
who saved Smith’s life in 1609 when he was ambushed by the Powhatan
Indians about a mile outside the Jamestown fort, not far from the colony’s
glassmaking operation.
Life at Jamestown was an on-going struggle. In early 1608, before the
Poles arrival, a fire destroyed buildings and what little supplies the settlers
had. At the height of Jamestown’s humid and malarial summer that year,
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many were too incapacitated to make any contribution. The Poles were not
spared from the devastating climate and added to this, their required work of
crafting clapboard, and pitch and tar for shipbuilding demanded expert skill
and exceptional physical stamina. Despite the odds their rate of survival
seemed to surpass that of the English. Of the five Poles, “Matthew” lived
until the Powhatan Indian attack in March 1622. “Robert,” is mentioned by
Smith in 1616, and reference is made to “Molasco” in Virginia Company
documents as late as 1624.
The Virginia Company loomed large in the minds of all the settlers.
First and foremost, Jamestown was essentially a profit-making venture under
the oversight of the Virginia Company of London. The settlers had to
quickly generate exports in order to live up to the Company’s expectations,
and, more importantly, make money for the Company’s investors. Soon
after the Poles arrived, Captain Christopher Newport sailed for England with
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wood products but this time he also carried pitch and tar, which would be
used specifically for shipbuilding and bolstering England’s maritime empire.
More than 7,000 pieces of broken window fragments used for glass making
were also found at Jamestown. This suggests that the artisans were actively
engaged on a number of fronts, perhaps helping with glass production that
began as early as 1608. Yet the production of wood products and “naval
stores,” such as pitch and tar represented a far greater achievement, at least
in the minds of the Virginia Company investors, for it enhanced England’s
competitiveness worldwide. The development of these products represented
the first industrial exports for profit from Jamestown—the very first glimpse
of the manufacturing and industrial giant that America would eventually
become.
Records seem to suggest that small groups of Poles may have settled
in the Tidewater of Virginia and even further inland by 1619. After 1620
when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Poles immigrated throughout
the northern part of America--to “New Netherland,” renamed New York
after being captured by the British in 1664, and to Pennsylvania and New
Jersey. They helped colonize what is now the Ohio Valley.
By the American Revolution, when there were probably several
thousand Poles in the colonies, their historical tie to democracy, which
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began with the first elected government in 1619, had become their birthright.
They fought in the American Revolution, alongside the famous Polish
Generals Pulaski and Kosciusko. They fought in the Civil War on both sides
of the conflict, and have fought, often with great distinction and at the
highest rank, in every American conflict since then. They have made their
mark on every aspect of American life as astronomers, astronauts, business
magnates, Hollywood producers and stars, Governors, U.S. Senators,
Academy Award, Olympic and Medal of Honor recipients.
Lest we forget, on many fronts and in many important ways, the
Poles’ contribution to America starts at the beginning—some 400 years
ago—and continues today. They deserve recognition as some of the first
immigrants who helped forge what we today enjoy as the American way-oflife.
(For more information on the Polish-Americans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polish_Americans)
[This article was written by Patricia Lehrer, a freelance writer in Washington, DC in collaboration
with the Embassy of Poland. Photographs by Thomas Alba, Williamsburg, VA]
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