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For Your Dollars and Ours Kosciuszko’s heirs claim
they should inherit
the White House, and
Pulaski’s–central Chicago.
The descendants of Polish
soldiers fighting for a free
Texas still hope to receive
the rights to the oil-bearing
lands that their ancestors
got in return for their
heroism.
The famous motto “For Your Freedom and
Ours” appears to have a fairly calculable value
now. The story of the supposedly gigantic inheritance
waiting in America for the families
of Polish soldiers fighting in the Texas Revolution
(1835-36) is exercising the minds of their
descendants and rightful heirs on both sides of
the Atlantic.
After the failure of the November Uprising,
numerous Polish military units were
formed in the USA out of the refugees. Some of
them fought bravely in the Mexican war. How
it all ended may be seen in the movies Alamo
and Texas based on James Michener’s bestselling
novels. More than 170 years ago, the tragic
siege of the Alamo stronghold near San Antonio
ended with the death of nearly all of its defenders.
Among them–
according to historical
records published
in the Librarian of the
Supreme Court of Texas–
were a number of
Poles, including Adolf
and Franciszek Pietrusiewicz,
Jan Kornicki
and Michał Dembiński.
Fifteen years after
the Texas Revolution,
the free state’s
authorities granted the
families of the fallen
Polish soldiers a gift of
4,000 acres of land in
Wichita, Dimitt, Titus
and Donley counties.
The area was calculated
as 300 acres per day
of their heroic fight.
It was mainly sand
and stones then, but
a few decades later oil was found there. And
oil meant–and still does–fortunes. However, to
get this land back today, the heirs would have
to prove their rightful claim to
the area under the current American
law. Can they do it? How
much needs to be invested in
lawyers good enough to fight
the case in courts? And who are
those people whose great-grandfathers
gave their lives fighting
for a free Texas?
Some of them live in Poland, in Bydgoszcz,
Włocławek and Iława. Others live in
the States. Some of them have given up their
fight for the inheritance. Others are still trying
to appeal to the Polish and American authorities
alike, in an attempt to get them interested
in the case. Some of them are still going
to the courts. Others write. They write
books and memoirs which include family stories
and legends. There are also other publications
that raise the issue, e.g., Texian Iliad by
the La Bahia Museum curator Stephen Hardin,
The Polish Texas by Lindsay Baker, or Promised
Land by Elizabeth Cook.
The first court trial for the rights to the
inheritance was held in St. Louis as early as
in 1852, and was lost. The next was heard in
1911. In it, the new owners managed to convince
the court that the territory had been granted
illegally in the first place. New attempts to
regain the oil-bearing land were made before
World War Two. Their only result was of historic
significance–the court documents turned
out to be very valuable collections of the
Polish immigrants’
letters, birth certificates,
maps, notes,
signed originals of
the Convention Memorial,
etc. In legal
terms, though–little
help to win the case.
Five generations
have passed
since the November
insurgents came
to America to fight
“for your freedom
and ours.” Their descendants
still search
Polish and US archives.
In the process,
they have
tur ned into investigators
of their heroic
roots and glorious
past. However, lawyers
find it increasingly
difficult to answer the questions whether
the 19th-century land grants are still valid and
how much the land is worth now. And the oil
keeps flowing… US law states
that if there is any controversy
concerning land ownership,
it is administered by the federal
government. Therefore, the oilbearing
area in question is now
owned by the state and leased to
extraction companies that earmark
part of their profits for
a special deposit fund just in case the rightful
heirs are established after all. So there is still
hope. How much is this deposit worth? The
latest estimates come from the early 1990s and
put their value at roughly 40 billion dollars.
Every year, the small town of Goliad witnesses
a ceremony commemorating the Alamo
massacre. And every year there are whiteand-
red flowers under the obelisk that lists
the Polish soldiers who fought and died for
a free Texas. If you visit the place, go to its little
church, and in one of the naves find a picture
of St. Mary of Częstochowa, a Polish flag
and a November Uprising banner with the inscription:
ZA WOLNOŚĆ WASZĄ I NASZĄ–
WOYSKO POLSKIE 1830.Ryszard Wolański
translated by Jerzy Chyb
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