[space] Item Description Source Date Remarks
[space] Name Pinkowski, Edward
[button] Obituary Biographic 1916 - 2020 Jack Pinkowski 2020 corrected birth date and place
[button] Web Page 1 Ellis Island Medal awarded . 2004 .
[button] Web Page 2 Award given by Florida Institute American Institute of Polish Culture in St. Petersburg 2003 .
[button] Web Page 3 Award given by ACPC ACPC 1997 .
[button] Article 1 Ellis Island Medal for Edward Pinkowski (in Polish) Nowy Dziennik 2004 b/w scan
[button] Photograph 1 Henryk Archacki with Edward Pinkowski (on left) Pinkowski Institute unknown color hi-rez
[button] Article 2 Polish Historian by Eileen Soler The Miami Herald Sept. 7, 2006 Neighbors Section
[button] Article 3 Two Pinkowskis Gave $25,000
to Heat Church in Poland 		Edward Pinkowski October 15, 2007 with photos
[button] Article 4 Connie Pinkowski - Obituary Edward Pinkowski February 10, 2008

[Pinkowski Picture]

Pinkowski, Edward

PINKOWSKI, EDWARD GREGORY, author, historian; b. Holyoke. Mass., Aug. 12, 1916; s. Felix Andrew and Aniela Barbara (Sobiek) P; grad. Newspaper Inst. Am., 1939; Antonelli Sch. Photography, 1949; student N.Y.U., 1948-50; m. Connie Rosiello, Sept. 26, 1943; children-- James, Jack. Contbr., Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item, 1935-39; staff corr., book reviewer, columnist Anthracite Tri-Dist. News, Hazleton, Pa., 1939-50; asso. editor Our Navy Mag., 1945-46; editor, pub. South Side Press, Bridgeport, Pa., 1950-52; free-lance writer, photographer, hist. researcher, 1946--. Commr., Phila. Hist. Commn., 1969--; hist. cons. Pulaski Day Corn., Phila., 1968--; chmn. Kosciuszko Commemorative Com., 1967, Sadowski Meml. Corm., 1966--; dir. Phila. 1976 Bicentennial Corp. Served with USNR. 1942-46. Recipient Meritorious award Council Polish socs., Del., 1965. Steuben medal Steuben Soc. Am., 1966, capt. Mlotkowski Brigade Distinguished Service award 1970. Mem. Polish Am. Hist. Assn. (Kosciuszko medal 1967, 2d v.p. 1968), Pa. Hist. Soc., Pa. Folklore Soc., Am. Name Soc., Polish Am. Congress, Ft. Delaware Soc. Democrat. Roman Catholic. Author: Lattimer Massacre, 1950; History of Bridgeport, Pa., 1951; Washington's Officers Slept Here, 1953; Forgotten Fathers, 1953; Chester County Place Names, 1955, 62; James Gay - Lost Bard of Pa., 1962; John Siney -The Miners' Martyr, 1963; Anthony Sadowski - Polish Pioneer, 1966; Kosciuszko in Philadelphia, 1967; Montgomery County Place Names, 1970. Home: 127 N 20th St Philadelphia PA 19103

From: "Marquis Who's Who in the East 1972-1973," 13th edition, Chicago, 1972-1973

To Edward Pinkowski, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Polish Center is an honor, a treasure, a decoration, a citation, a jackpot or whatever you want to call this token of appreciation. He thanks everyone who had anything to do with it.

Bringing to an end his 75-year career and retiring as one would expect are not in the picture. He does not want to wither away like a flower. The room in Florida where he works is like an old curiosity shop, with a little of this and a little of that, piles of papers on the floor and desks, boxes and books stacked on shelves to the ceiling, and a computer on

each side of a large window. On one wall is a charcoal sketch of a young man in a sailor's uniform, drawn by a Washington, DC, artist during World War II, just before Pinkowski started his family with Connie (Concetta) Rosiello, his wife of 64 years. The other walls have a high school diploma; a new map of Poland, after it was divided into 16 provinces; a key to Savannah, Georgia;

awards of all sorts and a photograph of a bronze bust of Pinkowski. The bust was carved in 1998 by Polish sculptor Andrzej Pitynski. It is displayed at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, and up to now is the only bust of a living person displayed by the Foundation.

Cleaning up the work in the room will take time, just as it took time to dispel many Polish myths in American history. For example, until he discovered in the 1960s Gen. Kosciuszko's final residence in the United States, at Third and Pine streets in Philadelphia, no one knew that Kosciuszko drafted his first will there. After leaving the boarding house in 1798, the hero of two continents wrote three more wills, changing his heirs each time. Contrary to general belief, no colored person, or school for colored people, ever got a cent from Kosciuszko's estate.

Three more errors caught by Pinkowski, which are still disregarded by encyclopedia publishers and sometimes by Poles themselves, involve Gen. Casimir Pulaski. Pinkowski's reports on the Polish hero of the American Revolution involved the hero's remains under the Pulaski Monument in Savannah, Georgia; his birth in Warsaw, Poland on March 6, 1745; and his death from war wounds, in the care of Capt. Samuel Bulfinch and his crew on a wooden sailing ship, Wasp, on Oct. 15, 1779. In 1852, Pulaski's remains were dug up from an unmarked grave on Greenwich plantation. They were kept in an iron box under the Pulaski Monument in Savannah for 143 years. Since Oct. 9, 2005, they have rested in a wooden coffin in the ground in front of the marble column. Yet, some people still say Pulaski was buried at sea.

Worst of all, because of Polish forgeries, Pinkowski has a hard time raising awareness of the contributions Poles have made to the United States. No historical records give the names of the first Poles at Jamestown in 1608. Nothing is more infuriating than for families of the same name to believe that Zbigniew Stefanski, Stanislaw Sadowski, Jan Bogdan and Jan Mata were the names of the first Poles in Jamestown, and then learn that the names were made up in the 1940s. When the census of Jamestown was taken in 1625, no Polish names were found in the colony.

In addition to investigations, newspaper work and book writing, Pinkowski has been active in many organizations. He was a founder of the Spring Garden Civic Association and Polish Heritage Society of Philadelphia; he also was organizer and president of the first public library in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, where his grandfather, Count Andrzej Pinkowski, first lodged in 1899 and worked in coal mines. He also formed a committee in memory of frontiersman Anthony Sadowski, who came from Poland at the turn of the 17th century and whose grandsons changed their last name to Sandusky two decades after his death in 1736; and he organized yet another committee, of all Philadelphia ethnic groups, as part of the 1976 bicentennial celebration. He also has been an officer in many other organizations.

Last but not least, he is founder and president of the Pinkowski Institute, and a director of the National Polish Center.

From: "2007 Annual Awards Dinner Program" National Polish Center; Washington, DC; May 5, 2007