KOSCIELSKI, COUNTFor one day in his life Count Koscielski, a Polish exile, came out of obscurity on May 10, 1852, to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he and Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian exile, predicted that the day would come when, in the providence of God, both Poland and Hungary would be free, and dropped out of sight. Nothing of Count Koscielski came up again. Close to it, Herr von Koscielski was the name of a 24-year-old passenger who boarded the Saxonia, a 2,684 gross ton vessel with accommodations for 650 passengers, at Hamburg, Germany, and arrived in New York on February 20, 1865. The sailing time was about 40 days. So far neither Count Koscielski nor Herr von Koscielski has left any written reference to their lives.
Had a Cincinnati journalist in his late twenties, William T. Coggeshall, not accompanied Kossuth on the last part of his American tour and written of his experiences, nothing of Count Koscielski would have been known. In addition to George S. Boutwell, governor of Massachusetts, Senator Daniel Webster, and other guests, the Polish count was invited to a banquet in honor of the Hungarian leader at the historic Samoset House in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Webster, due to an accident in his carriage, was unable to come. Prior to the dinner, Kossuth was taken to a venerated rock, where, as Alexis De Tocqueville described it in 1835, "the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant" and made famous. No written reference to anyone landing on the rock was found in the first 121 years of the Plymouth colony. One wonders whether Koscielski joined Kossuth at Plymouth Rock. It rained all day.
Count Koscielski was introduced to the audience in the hotel by Captain John Russell, chairman of the affair, and Kossuth followed him. They exchanged their remarks and Kossuth and his companions left Plymouth on the evening train for Boston. Altogether, over 600 persons boarded the train. Never before did Plymouth see such a crush of people at the railroad station as it did on May 10, 1852.
What I would to know, where did Count Koscielski come from, whether by train, horse and buggy, ship, or on foot, and did he leave a family behind him. More than half of the Koscielski families in the United States today live in five states -- Illinois 41, Michigan 39, Maryland 25, Ohio 23, and California 17. No words of mine are necessary to remind you of the importance of the name.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2011) [email protected]