Jacob Piwetz His 388
A New Waverly
In the late 1860’s, a group of men, women, and children crossed the stormy Atlantic, to try to find a brighter future in the land of opportunity. Spurred on by the greed of southern plantation owners these immigrants would, in the following years, build not only a new life for themselves, but also a small corner of America, New Waverly, which would surpass and outlive the settlement that they were originally meant to bolster.
America has always been a country of immigrants. For Texas, that is also true. During the 19th Century, especially the latter half, before America began to close or limit the flow of people seeking freedom across its borders, both America and Texas experienced unprecedented levels of immigration. One group, in particular, was the Polish. After the unsuccessful Polish Insurrection of 1863, many Polish citizens were more than happy to leave their troubled homeland, and search for a better life in a new land.
In Texas, the immigration of the Poles was chiefly done in two waves. The first wave of Polish immigrants settled in and around the settlement of Panna Maria, which holds the distinction of being the first organized settlement of Polish Immigrants in America. The Panna Maria wave began in 1854, before both the Polish uprising, and the American Civil War, both of which would have massive impact upon the second wave of Poland to Texas immigration, which would center on the small town of Waverly in the late 1860s.
The Civil War contributed to the second wave of Polish immigration by vastly changing the labor situation in the South. The freeing of the slaves created a labor shortage on large farms. In response to this, on September 19, 1866, a group of the well-to-do planters who lived around Waverly gathered together in the general store owned by one Meyer Levy in Waverly to discuss ways in which new labor could be found. At that meeting, the Waverly Immigration Society was founded, and a decision was made.
The solution that they hit upon, no doubt guided by Levy, who was a Polish Jew who had managed to establish himself in Waverly, was to send emissaries overseas to recruit suitable “foreign laborers” to work in the fields, replacing the slaves that they had so recently “lost” to freedom. Each planter made a request for whatever number of workers he needed. Special skills, if required, were also requested at this time. Meyer Levy, being Polish, was commissioned to go to Poland, and recruit a hundred and fifty workers to return with him to Waverly.
The system that they worked out was very nearly one of indentured servitude, where immigrants’ passages over were paid for by an outside entity, and after arrival, the cost of the journey was worked off. In the case of the immigrants brought to Texas by the Waverly Immigration society, these immigrants’ passages were paid for by the planters of the Waverly Immigration Society, in part equal to the proportion of the immigrants they wished to hire. The planters also would provide the immigrants with a “comfortable cabin’ and food. Men would be paid $90, $100, and $110 dollars for their first, second and third years working for the planter respectively. Women would be paid twenty dollars less a year than the men for their work. In return, the workers were to be “faithful laborers” and work for a period of three years, and out of their wages to repay the planter for the cost of their journey to the New World, before their contracts were complete, and they were released to do what they willed with their lives.
Levy sailed to Poland and fulfilled his charge, returning to the Texas coast in April of 1867 with a party of Polish immigrants. Willing workers were no trouble for him to find, as discontent in Poland after the Insurrection of 1863 made a new start and a new home seem like a very welcome prospect. In May, the party had finally returned to Waverly, and began to settle in and around the area which would later become New Waverly.
In the early years, the Polish immigrants worked as agricultural labor on the farms in the surrounding area. Immigrants from Poland looking for a place to settle or following relatives began to group around those already established. In 1869, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church was established, the first Polish Catholic Church in East Texas under Father Felix Orzechowski. New waverly would serve as a base for further Polish immigration of East Texas.
From a settlement by a small number of farm labor, New Waverly would continue to grow. As the railroad bypassed what had become known as Old Waverly, the parent town died, while the younger one continued to thrive and expand. The few wealthy farmers who met that afternoon in a room in a small general store could not have foreseen how the laborers that they required could create a thriving community which would shift the cultural landscape of Texas.
