Panna Maria: 150 Years of Polish Heritage

They had endured the long journey from their native land to a new home in Texas and paused to give thanks at Midnight Mass. It was a night that inspired faith and memory that has survived for generations.

This Christmas season marks the culmination of the yearlong sesquicentennial celebration of the South Texas village of Panna Maria, located in Karnes County about 50 miles southeast of San Antonio. Panna Maria, Polish for “Virgin Mary,” boasts the special distinction of being the oldest permanent Polish settlement in the United States.

Sometimes Polish Americans are surprised to learn that this tiny farming community serves as their cradle of colonization. Elaine Moczygemba, president of the Panna Maria Historical Society, comments:

“Polish people were up north already. It’s just that they didn’t have a colony. They didn’t have schools. They didn’t have churches. We don’t claim to be the first Poles in the United States, but the National Register of Historic Places lists Panna Maria as the first permanent Polish settlement.”

Elaine is a cousin of the patriarch of U.S. Polonia—the term refers to the nation’s Polish-American community as a whole—Leopold Moczygemba, a priest who came to Texas in 1852 and ministered to Catholic parishes in New Braunfels and Castroville. Hopeful of the promise held by this free and new land, Father Moczygemba (pronounced much-uh-GIM-buh) encouraged family and friends from his home of Upper Silesia, Poland, then under Prussian domination, to journey to Texas.

In 1854, about 100 families, including four of Father Leopold’s brothers and one sister, sailed to the Texas Gulf Coast and set out on the grueling trek inland. With few possessions, many of the colonists walked without shoes through the marshy, tangled brush of the coastal plains. They braved menacing weather, malaria, and the constant threat of rattlesnakes. Some travelers died along the way, and others dropped out to settle in existing communities. Those who pushed on finally reached San Antonio to meet Father Leopold, who led the immigrants to the selected site of rolling farmland near the junction of the San Antonio River and Cibolo Creek. Then he made arrangements to purchase 238 acres from Irish property owner John Twohig.

Through continuing hardships of disease, discrimination, and drought, those indomitable pioneers and the colonists that followed persevered. Gradually, they established farms. Most important, by 1856 they had built the symbol of their faith—Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church—beside the sturdy oak that had sheltered their first Mass.

See the full article in the December 2004 issue.

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