The image and text are attributed to the author, Trina Goss Galauner, as published in our July/September 2013 newsletter, Volume 22 Issue 3 and the January/March 2021 newsletter, Volume 30 Issue 1.
The Polish “Warszawa” neighborhood has its beginnings with the settlement of Newburgh, founded by James Kingsbury and his family in 1799. Other settlers from New England arrived and established mills. A main coach road was developed that eventually would become Broadway Avenue and in 1814 the area was organized and named Newburgh Township.
In the 1840s, the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was built through the township and in 1857 Jones & Co. established an iron rolling mill which eventually became the Cleveland Rolling Mill Co. With the increase in industrial employment, Welsh and Irish immigrants settled in the area and eventually Poles.
Poles lived in the Cleveland area as early as 1848. At that time, Poland wasn’t officially a country
since it had been carved up with the dissolution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. Those people formerly of Poland were Prussian, Russian, or Austrian nationals. But they kept their heritage, language and beliefs. The earliest Cleveland Poles were from Prussia and either settled here temporarily while in transit to the Midwest or assimilated into the German and Czech communities located around E.55th (Wilson) Street, between Central and Woodland Avenues. Not until the Civil War did Polish immigration begin to form the community of Warszawa. The Cleveland Rolling Mill company, established in 1863, needed workers due to the many Irish, Scotch and Welsh
laborers being called to the war effort. Both Czech and Polish immigrants heeded
the call and settled closer to the mills around E. 55th (S. Wilson) Street and Broadway
Avenue.
Slowly, parts of Newburgh Township were annexed by the city of Cleveland. By 1873, the heart of Newburgh became part of Cleveland.
The Turner Worsted Mill was established in 1878 thus attracting even more Polish immigrants and in 1880 a young Polish entrepreneur named Michal Kniola arrived to work in the Cleveland Rolling Mills. He would be instrumental in the growth of the Warszawa neighborhood.
Mostly Roman Catholic, the Polish immigrants petitioned for their own Polish congregation and were granted St. Stanislaus parish in 1873. For eight years, the parishioners worshipped at either St. Mary’s of the Flats or St. Joseph’s German congregation on Woodland Avenue. As more and more Polish immigrants were drawn to work at the mills, the Polish population settled further south down Broadway Avenue. In 1881, a small church was built on the corner of E. 65th (Tod) Street and Forman Avenue for the booming Polish population.
Fr. Anton Kolaszewski was installed as pastor. The church had such a large and supportive Polish congregation that by 1891 a marvelous brick church building was built to replace the wooden church. The neighborhood became known as Warszawa and is considered the largest of the original Polish settlements in Cleveland. Today it is part of “Slavic Village”.
Additional reading:
My grandmother was born in 1894 in a house on East 66th, then known as Poland Street. She was baptized at St. Stanislaus. Her name was Marianna Grucza. Her father, Bernard, worked at the Newburgh Rolling Mill. Her mother, Joanna, had already lost three children. Franz was born and died in 1883 in Gętomie, West Prussia. Joseph, the last child born in Gętomie, died in 1888, shortly after they arrived in Cleveland and is buried in St. Joseph Woodland Cemetery. Boleslawa, the first child born in Cleveland, died in 1890 and is buried in St. John Woodland. Both babies were less than two years old. Three more of her children would die as young adults including my grandmother who died at the age of 33 in 1927 of cancer. The boys in the family seemed to start off working in the Newburgh Wire Mill. The eldest later became an entrepreneur owning a saloon and was involved with a car dealership with a cousin. Another eventually worked on the railroad. The third died at age 30 of complications of a flu. Three daughters became Felician nuns. One was stationed near McKeesport, PA. The other two were near Detroit, MI. Two daughters married. The eldest daughter, also a Joanna, worked in the woolen mill before becoming a nun. She died of complications of a flu around 1921 and is buried by the motherhouse in PA. My grandmother worked at a laundry near East 78th and Broadway before marriage.
My grandparents and immediate family lived on E. 66th St in 1930. They owned their home.
Name was Plocharski.