Immigration

London, TX

For more than a century, travelers on the road from Mason to Junction threaded through this Hill Country pass. It carries the name of Adolph A. Reichenau, a German emigrant who settled nearby in the Big Saline Valley in 1860 as one of the area's early landholders — only to move on in 1866 amid the dangers of frontier raids. The pass was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Gonzales, TX

Built around 1907 by local craftsman Fred Meisenhelder, this one-story Victorian cottage was the home of Julius Frederick Remschel and his wife Luella. Remschel was the son of a German immigrant who had founded a local lumber company in 1888, and the house reflects its setting: siding milled from locally grown cypress, set atop brick columns from the Gonzales Sunset Brick and Tile Company. It stands as a record of a family and a town building with the materials at hand.

Castroville, TX

German immigrant Henry Renken opened this small burial ground in 1876 to lay his first wife, Lissette, to rest on land he had earlier sold to a neighbor. A pillar of the Alsatian-founded town of Castroville, Renken served as alderman and mayor and belonged to the Masonic Lodge before being buried here beside Lissette in 1885. The diminutive graveyard now sits surrounded by Castroville Regional Park.

Fredericksburg, TX

This Fredericksburg home is a small chronicle of frontier building written in its own walls. The oldest section, from about 1845, is fachwerk — the timber-and-infill method German immigrants carried to the Texas Hill Country — while later additions in log and clapboard frame show how families adapted with what they had. The Ressmanns bought it in 1866 and the Boos family held it into the 1970s, more than a century in the hands of two settler households.

Brenham, TX

Wilhelm Reue, who grew up in the Sandy Hill area, married Alma Muegge of the William Penn Community in 1914 and finished this home near Prairie Hill the following year. For decades it hosted community parties, dances, and meetings before the couple sold it in 1950 to Wilhelmina and Henry Eickenhorst, who kept farming the land. The Queen Anne house still shows its original L-shaped porch, roof cresting, star-and-ribbon porch brackets, and an oval glass inset in the front door.

Lowell, MA

André-Marie Garin was a French-born priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who spent his life ministering in the mill city of Lowell, where thousands of French-Canadian and immigrant laborers crowded the textile factories. Arriving in the mid-19th century, he founded parishes and schools that anchored a growing Catholic immigrant community until his death in 1895. The simple tribute—"He went about doing good"—captures the esteem in which working-class Lowell held him.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998

Isaac Leeser served as minister of Philadelphia's historic Congregation Mikveh Israel and became one of the most influential Jewish leaders in antebellum America. He founded The Occident, an early Jewish periodical, and in 1853 produced an English translation of the Hebrew Bible for American Jews. As a teacher and scholar he helped shape Jewish religious and communal life across the young republic.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1990

Father Joseph Murgas was a Catholic priest in Wilkes-Barre who was also a restless inventor, and on these grounds in 1898 he began experimenting with wireless telegraphy. In 1905 he transmitted sound here in a public demonstration, part of the frantic international race to master radio in the years around Marconi's breakthroughs. A painter, naturalist, and passionate advocate for Slovak causes, Murgas embodied the immigrant clergy who bridged Old World loyalties and New World innovation before his death in 1929.

Scranton, PA · est. 1948

Born in England in 1749, William Bishop became the first ordained minister to serve the future city of Scranton. Around 1795 he raised a combined log church and dwelling near this spot, where he preached to the scattered settlers of the region until moving on; he died in nearby Scott Township in 1816. His humble log meetinghouse was among the first institutions of faith in the Lackawanna Valley.

Bovina, TX

In 1901 the Rhea brothers bought a slice of the vast XIT Ranch and resold parcels to farmers, seeding a settlement of midwestern and German immigrant families on the Texas panhandle. A post office, a school, and Immanuel Lutheran Church—one of the panhandle's earliest of its denomination when it organized in 1910—anchored the community. The schoolhouse doubled as a gathering place until the district was divided between Friona and Bovina in 1949.

Pflugerville, TX

In the 1870s, German farming families in northern Travis County set out to school their children, and settler Franz Schmidt gave first his home and then an acre of his rich Blackland soil for the purpose—soil that gave the Richland School its name. A one-room schoolhouse rose in 1878, taught at first by German-speaking minister-teachers until the community pressed the state for a full-time, English-speaking instructor. The school grew across the decades, weathered a 1936 consolidation push, and finally merged into Pflugerville ISD in 1945.

New York, NY

In 1899, as the free public library movement swept American cities, Queens resident Ella Flanders — a member of the civic-minded 20th Century Club — launched a free circulating library out of Arcanum Hall on Jamaica Avenue, planting the seed of what became the Richmond Hill Branch of the Queens Borough Public Library. Women's clubs like hers were the quiet engines behind countless early American libraries, raising funds and stocking shelves at a time when tax-supported reading rooms were still a novelty. Among its first trustees was Jacob Riis, the reformer and photojournalist whose exposés of tenement life had made the case that knowledge and opportunity should reach every neighborhood.

Riesel, TX

After the Civil War, fertile soil, good water, and rail access drew cotton farmers to this stretch of southeastern McLennan County, soon joined by German settlers from Washington County led by the Rev. Friedrich Von Schleumbach. The nearby postal stop of Roddy served the area until William Henry Riesel built a cotton gin here in 1890, giving a town a reason to grow. Von Schleumbach platted the townsite, and Riesel took shape as a local agricultural center.

Fredericksburg, TX

This modest vernacular home went up in 1909 in the German settlement of Fredericksburg, built by Franz Stein for the Riley family. In 1912 it passed to Charles Enderlin, a German immigrant and Civil War veteran who reshaped the house to fit his large family and kept it in Enderlin hands for more than seventy years. Its side-gabled roof, shed-roof porch, and distinctive pair of front doors reflect the plain, practical building traditions of the Texas Hill Country.

Carson City, NV

Completed in 1876, the Rinckel Mansion is a striking example of High Victorian Italianate architecture, built for merchant Mathias Rinckel by French-schooled designer Charles H. Jones and European craftsmen. Its pressed brick, sandstone foundation from the state prison quarry, and knot-free Tahoe lumber reflect the wealth behind it. Rinckel, a German immigrant, made his first fortune in California's gold country, added to it at Virginia City, and by 1863 had settled in Carson City as a livestock and meat supplier to the mining districts.

Mission, TX

In the booming early-1900s Rio Grande Valley, Spanish immigrant and bricklayer Juan Bautista Barberá opened Teatro La Paz around 1912, bringing films, touring lecturers, actors, and musicians to the young farming town of Mission. Renamed the Río Theatre after Enrique Flores bought it in 1945, the modest vernacular commercial building has anchored the town's cultural life for over a century. It was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1982.

Socorro, TX

Established in 1915 as El Paso County's poor farm, this place sheltered the destitute under the care of the O'Shea family, and later Helen O'Shea Keleher, who devoted fifty years to the thousands of orphaned and neglected children who passed through. Renamed Rio Vista Farm, it hosted a parade of Depression-era relief programs — the Texas Transient Bureau, the WPA, and a CCC unit — before taking on its most far-reaching role. From 1951 to 1964 it served as a reception and processing center for the Bracero program, funneling Mexican laborers into the fields of the lower valley and beyond.

Conoy Township, PA · est. 2012

Around 1780, amid the ferment of the Revolutionary era, a small band of Pennsylvania German believers gathered along Conoy Creek for their first baptism, founding one of the earliest home-grown American religious denominations. They worshipped down this lane at Magdalena House, the home of co-founder Jacob Engel, and came to be called the River Brethren for the streams in which they baptized. By the mid-19th century the group took the name Brethren in Christ, and its offshoots — the Old Order River Brethren and the United Zion Church — carry the lineage still.

Riviera, TX

Riviera was founded on the South Texas coastal plain by Theodore F. Koch, a Dutch immigrant who dedicated land for a burial ground in 1907 and formally deeded it to a cemetery association in 1910. The earliest recorded graves, from 1909, belong to Maudie Ethel Poteet and Wilson A. Myers. Community leaders, war veterans, and victims of flu and yellow fever epidemics rest here under the association's care.

Wortham, TX

Robert B. Longbotham (1797–1883) was born in Sunderland, England, and crossed the Atlantic as a carpenter's apprentice aboard ship. After marrying in Alabama, he came to Texas in 1832, secured a land grant from Mexico, and fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution and in Indian conflicts of 1839. He settled at this place in 1848, and the town bore his name until its post office was renamed Wortham in 1874.

Negley, TX

Robert Hamilton, born in Scotland in 1783, cast his lot with the Texas independence movement and on March 2, 1836, was among the delegates who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He settled in Red River County, where he died in 1843, during the years of the young Republic of Texas.

Hockley, TX

Abraham Roberts, a member of Stephen F. Austin's Colony, came to Texas in the late 1820s and named his settlement New Kentucky; by the 1840s it had become the German-settled Spring Creek community. His own burial around 1850 is thought to be the first here, and the ground grew into a community cemetery holding the Roberts, Schultz, and Montgomery families. A nearby separate burial ground is believed to have been set aside for enslaved people of the Montgomery plantation, and the graveyard remains in use today.

Rosenberg, TX

Fleeing Russia between 1898 and 1910, the Robinowitz family built a new life in Texas the hard way — starting as traveling peddlers before opening stores in Richmond, Beasley, and Rosenberg. As merchants and builders, Cecil, Abe, and Libby Robinowitz put up the early-1920s Avenue G buildings that housed the post office, a dress shop, and a grocery, helping shape downtown Rosenberg during its formative growth.

Robstown, TX

Completed in 1940 as one of nine New Deal migrant-labor camps in Texas, the Robstown camp housed the workers who picked Nueces County's cotton and vegetables, offering medical care, schooling, and job training. Through wartime labor programs and into county operation it served migrant families until 1968, and in its later years it became a center of Hispanic civil-rights organizing, with the American G.I. Forum building low-income housing on part of the site.

College Station, TX

In 1891 German immigrant Adam Royder gave an acre of Brazos County prairie so local children could be schooled, and a one-room schoolhouse rose where students learned through the seventh grade. Nine years later a Baptist congregation organized inside those same walls, and the little building did double duty as school and sanctuary. When the school consolidated away in 1919, the faithful kept the doors open for worship.

Rockne, TX

Rockne grew from farms broken by German immigrants who reached this Bastrop County creek country beginning in the 1840s, families like the Lehmans and Meuths arriving from Prussia and central Germany. A Catholic parish anchored the community, which cycled through names—Walnut Creek, Lehman, Hilbigville—as stores and post offices came and went. In 1931 schoolchildren renamed it for Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne, killed that year in a plane crash.

Round Top, TX

The original one-story house here was built around 1854 for settler James Wade on land that had been the Nassau Farm, a tract the German Emigration Society (Adelsverein) acquired through its agent Count Boos-Waldeck for planned immigrant colonization—though the society ultimately settled its colonists elsewhere. In 1894 Rudolph Weigelt, newly arrived from Germany, bought the farm, and in 1913 he built the present house right around the original, enclosing the older structure within it.

Moosic, PA · est. 2008

Opened in 1886, Rocky Glen Park grew into a beloved amusement and social center for northeastern Pennsylvania, drawing crowds for a century until it closed in 1987. The "Laurel Line" electric railroad widened its reach in the early 1900s, and the grounds became known for ethnic celebration days that mirrored the region's immigrant diversity. Live performances and rides — including the famed "Million Dollar" roller coaster — made it a cherished summer destination.

Cabarrus County, NC

Established in the early 1750s, this congregation took root among the Scots-Irish Presbyterians who poured into the North Carolina backcountry along the Great Wagon Road. The traveling minister Hugh McAden preached here in 1755, and Alexander Craighead—a fiery advocate of religious and civil liberty—became its first settled pastor in 1758. The present sanctuary dates to 1860, but the community's roots reach back a century earlier.

Johnstown, PA · est. 2022

On July 10, 1902, a gas explosion tore through the Cambria Iron Company's Rolling Mill Mine on this Johnstown hillside, killing 112 bituminous coal miners, most of them immigrants. It was the first of four major Pennsylvania mining disasters in a decade that became the deadliest in the history of American underground coal mining. Coming the same year as the great anthracite coal strike, the tragedy spurred the creation of a state Department of Mines in 1903 to promote workplace safety.

Floydada, TX

The Catholic faith first reached this stretch of the South Plains with Coronado's 1540s search for the fabled cities of gold, when his men camped in nearby Blanco Canyon. Over the centuries the region passed through Mexican and then American church jurisdictions, and by the early 1900s priests were ministering to a growing flock of settlers and immigrants drawn by cheap land. Waves of newcomers from Mexico — during the Revolution and later through the Bracero labor program — fueled decades of church-building, culminating in the creation of the Diocese of Lubbock in 1983.

Boston, MA

This rose garden on Boston's waterfront honors Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890–1995), the daughter of colorful Boston mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald and matriarch of one of America's most storied political families. Born in the North End to Irish-American parents at the height of Boston's immigrant era, she raised nine children—among them a president, an attorney general, and a long-serving U.S. senator—and became a public symbol of faith and perseverance through decades of family triumph and tragedy. The garden's setting near the harbor ties her memory to the Boston neighborhoods where the Fitzgerald and Kennedy families rose from immigrant roots to national prominence.

Wills Point, TX

German-born brothers B. W. and Isaac 'Ike' Rose arrived near Wills Point in 1873 and opened Rose Dry Goods Store, with Ike later making his fortune as a Dallas entrepreneur while B. W. stayed on. In 1916 Ike, wanting to thank a town he loved, worked with Mayor Henry Gilchrist to give Wills Point a fountain rather than a memorial. The ornate concrete fountain, with its stepped base, water troughs, and globe-lit central column, has served ever since as a gathering place and gateway to the historic commercial district.

Tomball, TX

Pioneer German immigrants who settled the Rose Hill area organized this fellowship in 1875 as the Spring Creek Mission, under the Rev. Friedrich Ries. The earliest services met in the home of Friederick Oeft, who donated the land, and the first sanctuary was built here in 1876. For well over a century the church has anchored the community and helped preserve its German heritage.

Brenham, TX

English immigrant William H. Watson founded Rosedale around 1860 as Texas's first commercial nursery, growing it from three acres in Brenham to some 200 acres by 1897. Specializing in peaches and grapes, Watson issued detailed catalogs, stocked ornamental plants, and in 1874 introduced his own "Rosedale Hybrid" arborvitae. He employed gardeners trained at England's renowned Kew Gardens, and his sons carried the business into the twentieth century.

Corsicana, TX

Ben Rosenberg left Poland around 1882 and, after a few years in Waco, put down roots in Corsicana at the turn of the boomtown's cotton-and-oil prosperity. He ran the Cotton Exchange Saloon and later founded an implement company, becoming a generous fixture of the town's sizeable Jewish community. This house, built for his wife Rachel and their son, stayed in the family for more than half a century.

Ross, TX

When the railroad reached this spot in 1873, it bypassed the older settlement of White Rock, and residents simply picked up and moved to the new town growing along the tracks. They named it for Lawrence Sullivan "Sul" Ross — Texas Ranger, Confederate general, sheriff, governor, and later a respected college president. Rich farmland drew European immigrants and made Ross an early hub of agricultural trade.

Rossville, TX

In 1873 the Scottish-born brothers William and John Ross, who had come to Texas in 1867 and won a contract to carry the U.S. Mail, noticed the fertile soil and abundant game of Atascosa County along their route. They settled and drew other Scottish families after them, founding what became the first Scottish community in southwest Texas. Rossville grew to boast a school, cotton gin, post office, stores, a bakery, and a saloon before the railroad passed it by and it faded.

Round Rock, TX

Settlement gathered here in the late 1830s, and by mid-century former Austin mayor Jacob Harrell was selling lots near the Stagecoach Road crossing at Brushy Creek. A post office opened in 1851, and the community soon renamed itself Round Rock for a distinctive limestone ford; immigration from several states and Sweden doubled its population in the 1850s. When the railroad built a new townsite to the east in 1876, "New Town" quickly eclipsed the old settlement, and Round Rock briefly rivaled Austin as a commercial hub before growing, a century later, into one of the nation's fastest-expanding cities.

Round Top, TX

This Fayette County community was home to a remarkable cluster of Texas founders — veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto, one of the men who captured Santa Anna, the Republic of Texas's first postmaster general, and a boy taken captive on the Mier Expedition. By mid-century it had also become a vibrant center of German immigrant culture, from plantation life and craftsmanship to schools, churches, and a handmade pipe organ. Its stagecoach inn and stone masonry still echo that heritage.

Mason, TX

Stonemason Thomas Broad built this Mason home around 1891, one of several he crafted with turned posts and random-ashlar stonework marked by distinctive quoins and pointing. From 1895 it belonged to Therese Runge and her husband Rudolph, a German-born attorney; their sons Carl and Roscoe grew up to become prominent Texas lawyers and politicians.

New York, NY

Beneath the streets of Lower Manhattan lies the buried heart of 17th-century New Amsterdam, the Dutch trading colony that grew into New York. On this block, one of the city's first large-scale urban archaeological digs unearthed the foundations of the Stadt Huys — the town hall that served as the seat of Dutch, then early English, colonial government — along with the remains of a nearby tavern. The recovered walls, ceramics, and everyday objects offered a rare tangible glimpse of the small port town that once stood where skyscrapers now rise.

Yoakum, TX

On land donated in 1868, Irish and Czech Catholic settlers near the trading station of Bovine built St. Joseph's Church from Muldoon stone, milled pine, and hand-hewn logs, with blacksmiths forging the very nails and hinges on site. The parish was tied to Father John Anthony Forest, who became bishop of the Diocese of San Antonio. The last Mass was said here in 1912, and the church burned in 1932, leaving the ruins that stand today.

Santa Fe, TX

Henry J. Runge (1859–1922), the European-educated son of a German immigrant and a Galveston businessman, bought the land and laid out the town of Arcadia in 1890, setting aside this site as a park at the same time. The county commissioners later named it in his honor. The park hosted its first community-wide event, a dairy show, in 1938 — a tradition that continues — and grew to host the annual Galveston County Fair and Rodeo.

Rutersville, TX

Founded in 1838 on the recommendation of pioneer Methodist missionary Dr. Martin Ruter, this Fayette County town was named for him after he died, worn out by his Texas travels, that same year. In 1840 the Republic of Texas chartered Rutersville College here — the Republic's first Protestant college — open to families of all faiths. Students were known for interrupting classes to pursue Indian raiders, and after the Civil War German immigrants bought up the town, their descendants living here still.

Cleveland, TX

Also called Ryan's Graveyard, this burial ground has served the ranching and farming community of Tarkington Prairie since at least the 1860s, its earliest marked grave belonging to a ten-year-old boy in 1863. It takes its name from Irish immigrant John Jacob Ryan, a prosperous storekeeper found shot dead on the nearby road in 1873 in a murder whose accused killers were acquitted. Veterans reaching back to the Texas Revolution and the Civil War, early Baptist church members, and Masonic lodge founders all rest here, drawing descendants to an annual memorial service.

Cameron, TX

Drawn by fellow immigrant Joseph Russek, Czech families settled this corner of Milam County in the 1880s, first hearing Mass in the Kaspar Kubecka home in 1883. The Kubeckas donated land in 1889, and a wooden church—named for Saints Cyril and Methodius, patrons of the Moravian people—was dedicated in 1905, offering worship in Latin, German, and Czech and anchoring the community's social life for generations.

Fayetteville, TX

When the S.P.J.S.T.—a Czech fraternal benevolent order—formed its Supreme Lodge in La Grange in 1897, Fayetteville's Lodge No. 1 soon built the hall that still stands, completed in 1910. Its board-and-batten dance hall, with shutters that swing open for a breeze, plus a concession stand and kitchen, made it the beating heart of community life, later joined by a baseball stadium. More than a century on, the complex still hosts the social and cultural gatherings it was built for.

Temple, TX

In January 1903, Frank Motl and J.F. Sefcik led Seaton's Czech settlers in forming a lodge of the SPJST, a Czech benevolent society, taking the name Hvezda Texasu — the Texas "Star" Lodge. Members first met in a blacksmith shop and the Seaton School before building their first hall here in 1906, adding land and larger facilities over the years. The lodge nurtured drama, gymnastics, traditional dance, and choir while hosting dances, reunions, and agricultural fairs.

Braintree, MA

On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and a security guard carrying a shoe company's payroll were shot and killed during an armed robbery in this Massachusetts factory town. The two men — Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli — died doing their jobs, and their killing set in motion one of the most controversial criminal cases in American history. Two Italian immigrant anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested, tried, and ultimately executed for the crime amid worldwide protest over whether they had received a fair trial.

Texarkana, TX

When the Texas and Pacific Railroad founded Texarkana in December 1873, buyers like Anthony Ghio and Col. R.W. Rodgers snapped up lots on the first day of sale and soon organized Sacred Heart Catholic Church under a Galveston priest. Rodgers donated this cemetery land in 1876, a year after his young daughter Agnes was buried here. Its monuments—ironwork by the local LeGrand family, sculpture from a Paris studio, and inscriptions naming immigrants from sixteen countries—reflect a strikingly diverse railroad-town congregation.

White Deer, TX

The White Deer Land Company donated five acres for this cemetery in 1913, a quarter mile from the town's historically Polish Sacred Heart parish. Its first burial that January was the infant son of the Czerner family, and its white crosses and crucifix mark generations of the Polish Catholic community, including veterans of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Parishioners still tend the grounds side by side, as their ancestors did.

San Angelo, TX

Catholic priests had visited the Concho River country since the 1600s, but a lasting church took root only after Fort Concho's 1867 founding, when Father Mathurin Pairier began caring for the soldiers and settlers of the frontier. On land donated in 1874 by San Angelo promoter Bart DeWitt, he completed the town's first church building in 1884, serving a mingled congregation of Mexican, English, Irish, and German Catholics soon joined by teaching Sisters of Charity. Rebuilt as Sacred Heart in 1906, it became the cathedral of the new Diocese of San Angelo in 1961 and remains the mother church of West Texas Catholicism.

Hallettsville, TX

Sacred Heart began as a mission of St. Mary's parish, ministered to by the Rev. John Anthony Forest, who held early services in the homes of recently arrived European immigrants. Collatinus and Mary Jane Hallet Ballard donated land in 1869, construction started in 1873, and the completed 1882 building made Sacred Heart a full parish. That same year the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament opened Sacred Heart Academy on the grounds, and Father Forest later left to become bishop of San Antonio.

Brownsville, TX

Founded by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate for the English-speaking Catholics of Brownsville, Sacred Heart Church rose in Gothic Revival style to a 1913 dedication, designed by San Antonio architect Frederick B. Gaenslen. Its tall bell towers and pointed stained-glass windows served the parish until 1967, when it became a chapel of Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

Lott, TX

At the turn of the twentieth century, a traveling priest rode from Marlin once a month to say Mass for just seven German Catholic families near Lott. The parish bought land here in 1905, dedicated Sacred Heart Catholic Church the next year, and by 1907 had added a rectory, a school, and its own cemetery. The congregation grew steadily through the century, rebuilding a larger sanctuary in 1951 with materials salvaged from the original church and school.

Rowlett, TX

Sacred Heart, the second Catholic church organized in Dallas County, grew from the devotion of Irish immigrant Patrick McEntee, who came to Texas in 1874 and helped build the local railroad. Tradition holds that services were held in his home before this Gothic Revival church was built in 1899 and dedicated the next year, its thirteen stained-glass windows reputedly imported from Germany. In 1922 parishioners turned the whole building around to face the new Bankhead Highway, resetting it on its original foundation.

Galveston, TX

Established in 1884 as the fourth Catholic church on Galveston Island, Sacred Heart grew with a booming port city whose faithful had worshiped there since 1838. Its first building, designed by celebrated Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton, was destroyed in the catastrophic 1900 hurricane; the present church rose in 1903–04, an exuberant blend of Moorish, Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque forms with octagonal towers and flying buttresses. When a later storm damaged the dome in 1915, Clayton himself redesigned it.

Saint Hedwig, TX

In 1855, immigrants from Upper Silesia in Prussian Poland scraped together a community in far eastern Bexar County, buying land from a Georgia planter and registering their cattle brands with the county clerk. Locally nicknamed "Polanderville," the farming settlement grew after the Civil War, when freed African Americans from nearby plantations were welcomed in, bought land, and taught the Poles to raise cotton. By 1890, renamed for St. Hedwig, patron saint of Silesia, it had become the largest Polish community in Texas.

Harford County, MD

In the rolling farmland of Harford County stands a church whose roots reach back to the Jesuit missionaries who kept the Catholic faith alive in Maryland — a colony founded as a rare haven of religious tolerance in early America. Completed in 1792 by Father Sylvester Boarman, a Jesuit tending the nearby mission of St. Joseph at Priest's Ford, Saint Ignatius rose in the first years of the new republic, when Catholics were only beginning to worship freely and openly. It is remembered as the oldest Roman Catholic church in continuous use in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the founding see of American Catholicism. Its early pastors even ministered to the family of Charles Carroll, the Maryland statesman whose name is woven through the nation's founding.