Pilarczyk Store
Panna Maria, Karnes County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1875; second oldest store in Panna Maria; still has original rafters and floors. Lime for mortaring stones (visible on back and sides) was fired in home kilns. Store was bought by Victor Pilarczyk, 1913. First gas pump was installed 1919. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1875 in Panna Maria — the oldest Polish settlement in the United States — this was the community's second-oldest store, its stone walls mortared with lime fired in home kilns. Victor Pilarczyk bought the store in 1913 and installed its first gas pump in 1919. Its original rafters and floors still survive.
Why it matters
Standing in America's first Polish colony, the store is a tangible link to the immigrant community that carried Old World traditions into the Texas prairie and adapted them to frontier commerce.
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Related people
- · Victor Pilarczyk
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Panna Maria, Texas
Panna Maria, TX
On Christmas Eve 1854, about a hundred Polish families from Upper Silesia and Krakow reached this spot and founded Panna Maria—the oldest permanent Polish colony in America. Led by Father Leopold Moczygemba and having contracted for land through San Antonio banker John Twohig, they had endured a nine-week ocean voyage and a 200-mile inland walk, some barefoot, carrying featherbeds and the cross from their parish church in Poland. Naming the site for the Virgin Mary, they celebrated a first Midnight Mass beneath a great oak and built their new home from mud, straw, and eventually stone.
Town of Panna Maria
Panna Maria, TX
On Christmas Eve of 1854, the Rev. Leopold Moczygemba established Panna Maria, the oldest Polish settlement in Texas, having helped bring roughly 100 Polish peasant families across the ocean to the Karnes County prairie. The transition was hard, and within a few months many of the families scattered to seek homes elsewhere in Texas. Those who stayed rooted a Polish American community that endures on this spot.