Program of PAHA's 72nd Annual Meeting, January 2-4, 2015, New York

We are looking forward to meeting you in New York during the next Annual Meeting of the Polish American Historical Association. The conference will take place at the New York Hilton Midtown, 1225 Avenue of the Americas, New York. 

This year there is NO REGISTRATION FEE and only those wishing to participate in our Awards  Ceremony and Reception at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland will have to pay for tickets.

The Awards Banquet will take place on Friday, January 2, 2014, 7:00PM - 10:00PM at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York,  233 Madison Avenue (Jan Karski Corner), New York, NY 10016. Tickets: $35 per person: Reserve Your Ticket Now!

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PAHA Annual Board Meeting

Friday, January 2, 2015: 3:30 PM-5:30 PM New York Hilton, Hilton Board Room

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Polish American Literature

Saturday, January 3, 2015: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM New York Hilton, Lincoln Suite; Chair: Pien Versteegh, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences

• Brigid Pasulka’s A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True and the Work of Ethnic Fiction - Ann Hetzel Gunkel, Columbia College at Chicago (cancelled)

• The Case against My Brother: The Intersection of History, Literature, and Ethnicity - Thomas Napierkowski, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• Patterns of Ethnicity in Polish American, Polish Canadian, and Anglo-Polish Fiction after 1989 - Grazyna Kozaczka, Cazenovia College

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The Long Nineteenth Century: Themes in History

Saturday, January 3, 2015: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM New York Hilton, Concourse B; Chair: Neal Pease, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

• “Domestic Education” and “Work at the Foundations”: Class, Gender, and Progressive Reformism in the United States and Poland -  Marta Cieslak, University at Buffalo (SUNY) Cancelled

• Future War of John Bloch versus Norman Angell’s Great Illusion - Andrzej Pieczewski, University of Łódź

To Save the Union; or, For the Just and Right Cause? Why Poles Fought in the Civil War, 1861–65 - Piotr Derengowski, University of Gdańsk and University at Buffalo (SUNY)

• The Battle of Maciejowice & Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s Myth -  Anna Cortes, Polish Academy of Sciences

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Solidarity: At Home and Abroad

Saturday, January 3, 2015: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM New York Hilton, Lincoln Suite; Chair: Anna Mazurkiewicz, University of Gdańsk

• To Be a Woman in the Male-Dominated World of the Lenin Shipyard Workers: Anna Walentynowicz’s Quest in Life - Anna Muller, University of Michigan–Dearborn

• Andrzej Wajda’s Solidarity Trilogy - Sheila Skaff, New York University

• The Return Migration of Solidarity Refugees - 
Mary Patrice Erdmans, Case Western Reserve University

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Figures in Polish and Polish American History

Saturday, January 3, 2015: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM
New York Hilton, Concourse B; Chair: John Radzilowski, University of Alaska, Southeast

• Father Theodore Suk: A Man of Faith - Barbara Pulaski, Mount Ida College

• Alfred Jurzykowski and his Foundation: A Brief Outline - 
Czeslaw Karkowski, Hunter College and Mercy College

• Zbyszko, “The Mighty Pole”: Stanley Zbyszko, Polish Americans, and Sport in the Early Twentieth Century -  Neal Pease, U. of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

• Jan Brożek’s Contribution to Copernican Studies Originating from His Queries in Warmia in 1618 -  Jan Chroboczek, Institute de Microélectronique, Électromagnétisme et Photonique

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World War II: Literature, Memoir, and Herbert Hoover’s Humanitarianism

Saturday, January 3, 2015: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM New York Hilton, Lincoln Suite; Chair: Thomas Napierkowski, U. of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• Warsaw Polish Writers-Diarists Encountering the Holocaust: The Cases of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz and Maria Dąbrowska  - Rachel Brenner, University of Wisconsin– Madison

• Integrating History, Memory, and Intimate Ethnography: A Polish Biography-Memoir of World War II, Immigration, and a Life Remade -  Barbara Rylko-Bauer, Michigan State University

• Herbert Hoover, Poles, and Poland: An Inquiry into a Dynamic Relationship - Frederick J. Augustyn, Library of Congress

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Themes in the History of Polish Music 

Sunday, January 4, 2015: 11:30 AM-1:30 PM New York Hilton, Concourse E; Chair: Grazyna Kozaczka, Cazenovia College

• The Impact of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s American Years on Spiewy Historyczne -  Maja Trochimczyk, Moonrise Press

• A Musical Survey of the Song Output of Karol Szymanowski -  Julianna Wrycza-Sabol, Syracuse University (cancelled)

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Polish American History from the Seventeenth Century through the Mid-Twentieth Century 

Sunday, January 4, 2015: 11:30 AM-1:30 PM
New York Hilton, Harlem Suite; Chair: Thomas Napierkowski, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• New Amsterdam or New Gdańsk? Polish Settlers in
New Amsterdam, 1624–64 - Pien Versteegh, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences and James Pula, Purdue University North Central

• KNAPP: The National Committee of Americans of Polish Descent -  Charles Chotkowski, Piast Institute 

The Eviction of the Kashube Fishermen of Jones Island Milwaukee: Then and Now -  Ann Gurnack, University of Wisconsin–Parkside

• A New Polonia? The Recreation of Polish American Identity, 1918–45 -  John Radzilowski, University of Alaska, Southeast

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The Aftermath of World War II

Sunday, January 4, 2015: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM New York Hilton, Concourse F; Chair: Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, Eastern Conn. State University

• Citizenship Practices during the Cold War: A Polish American Model? - Florence Vychytil-Baudoux, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

• Paralyzing the Polonia from Within: Communist Secret Police Infiltration of the Polish American Community -  Pawel Styrna, Institute of World Politics

• Cold War Émigrés: Looking for Patterns in Exile Political Activism -  Anna Mazurkiewicz, University of Gdansk

• Polish Refugees from Siberia in the United States, 1945–2014 -  Iwona Korga, Józef Pilsudski Institute of America

• Defending the Remnants: American Jews Respond to Poland’s 1968 Anti-Zionist Campaign -  Rachel Rothstein, University of Florida

Louise Warfield and Count Włodzimierz Ledóchowski (PAHA News, Spring 2014)

FROM ANNALS OF POLISH-AMERICAN HISTORY

by Thomas Hollowak

Warfield and Count Ledochowski, with the family crest

Baltimore women are renowned for their beauty and two are remembered for their marriages to nobility – Elizabeth “Betsy” Patterson married Joseph, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who later abandoned her and Wallis Warfield Simpson to England’s King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor. Less known is the marriage of Wallis’ older cousin Louise Warfield, daughter of Edwin Warfield, Governor of Maryland (1904-1908) to Count Włodzimierz Ledóchowski.

The couple met at Peking, China, where her brother Edwin introduced them to each other at a foreign embassy entertainment. Since she didn’t speak Polish and he did not know English, they conversed in French. After a brief courtship they became engaged. When she returned home in December 1912 she was reticent to speak about the rumored engagement since her parents opposed the match because of the brevity of the courtship and her large fortune. She was able to convince her father it was a true “love” match and the wedding set for May.

Count Ledóchowski was a nephew of the late Cardinal Mieczysław Halka Ledóchowski, Primate of Poland and prefect of the Propaganda at the Vatican. The Ledóchowski family lineage began in 1457 in the Volhynian Voivodeship where the boyar knight Nestor Halka took the name of his estate, Ledóchow, as his own. It is believed that the dynastic family Halka dates to the time of the Kievan Rus in 971. The Halka family’s used the official Austrian title of Halka von Ledóchow Count Ledóchowski.

On May 8, 1913 the couple was married at the Warfield home in Baltimore by Rev. William A. Fletcher, rector of the Cathedral. Cardinal Gibbons witnessed the ceremony, and bestowed his blessing. It was a simple ceremony because the bride’s maternal grandmother had recently died. Only relatives and a few personal friends were invited. After a wedding breakfast the couple left for New York to take a steamship to return to Poland to reside at the family estate, located near the Austrian border, an eight-hour journey from Moscow and twelve-hours from Vienna and in the midst of the zone of war that erupted on July 28, 1914.

Warfield with her daughter.

On August 19, the Warfield family received a cablegram form Włodzimierz dated August 18,Ostropol, Russian Poland “Situation uncertain. Louise safe with cousins.” There was no news from her until October when the family received several letters appealing for medical and surgical supplies, as well as clothing and blankets. These appeals prompted the former Governor to establish the Russian Poland Red Cross Relief Fund Committee. The local Polish Community rallied to his support and by December the first of several boat loads of supplies were sent to Poland.

After the war he would be honored by Baltimore’s Polonia for his efforts. Although the couple would have three children, two daughters and a son the marriage was doomed and on November 25, 1922 they were divorced. She was given custody of the children and the following year she renounced her title to regain U.S. citizenship and took back the name Warfield.

Thomas L. Hollowak

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Reprinted from PAHA Newsletter, Spring 2014.