Author: Lawrence D. Orton

Publisher:

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13:

The Reverend Dominik Kolasiński (1838-1898) left Detroit an enduring legacy in St. Albertus's and Sweetest Heart of Mary's, two of the city's most magnificent churches, but his ecclesiastical career was turbulent and controversial. Because he believed that he had been unjustly suspended as a pastor of St. Albertus's, Kolasiński undertook a successful struggle for vindication and reinstatement which caused almost a decade of turmoil in the Polish immigrant community. Loved by many and despised by some, Father Kolasiński through his activities focused public attention on the new Polish Americans and their way of life, as well as on the sometimes strained relationship between the Polish Roman Catholic parishes and the non-Polish diocesan authorities. Lawrence D. Orton, making extensive use of the accounts in contemporary newspapers, tells the story of what came to be known as the Kolansiński Affair with insight and objectivity. He also includes a detialed survey of the beginnings, expansion, and consolidation of Detroit's Polish community in the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the attitudes and perceptions of "native" Detroiters. His study attests to the peasant immigrants' efforts to maintain their own traditions in an urban and sometimes hostile environment and to their establishment of religious and cultural institutions that facilitated their adjustment to their new lives. Profusely illustrated with contemporary drawings, photographs, and a map of the nineteenth-century Polish quarter, this volume makes a substantial contribution both to the history of Detroit and to the history of Poles in the United States. -- from dust jacket.