Maciejewski, Rev. Julian
(Jan. 12, 1800 -- March 25, 1865)
Pioneer priestRev. Julian (Juliusz in Polish) Maciejewski never had any doubt with what he would do with his life. He was born in the village of Tomczyce, which lies 41 miles north of Poznan, and studied for the priesthood at the Bernardine seminary in Skepe, all in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). When the Prussian government suppressed the religious order, he taught children in irregular schools until revolution broke out across almost all of Europe on 1848. He fled to the United States in 1851.
On Feb. 10, 1852, in New York City, where he found refuge with a fellow-countryman, Rev. Ludwig Jerzykowicz, Maciejewski sat down and wrote a letter to the Archdiocese of Poznan in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), asking for a record of his ordination in order that the archbishop of New York might find work for him. On September 5, 1852, however, the Most Rev. Peter Lefevre, who served as the second bishop of the Diocese of Detroit from 1841 to 1869, asked Maciejewski to take care of Holy Trinity parish in Alpine Township, ten miles northwest of Grand Rapids. The church, in the rolling hills and wetlands of western Michigan, was established essentially in 1848 to meet the spiritual needs of German cranberry growers. Despite an attempt in 1855 to merge with the Germans in Grand Rapids, Father Maciejewski remained pastor of Holy Trinity until 1858.
Obviously, Father Maciejewski and the cranberry growers did not come from the same stock. The Germans wanted to get rid of him. As fluent as he was, the Polish priest celebrated Mass in German and Latin in a small and insignificant church, and probably also in Grand Rapids, for the Catholic Almanac of 1855 noted that he occasionally attended a Polish colony of five families, later called Parisville, on the other side of the lower peninsula. Without details, at a time when Michigan was so wild that nobody dared to cross it on horseback, it's hard to understand how he managed to celebrate Mass so far apart.
Looking back, neither Jerzykowicz, who was among 234 Polish exiles deported in two Austrian warships to New York in 1834, nor Maciejewski, who was expelled from Wielkopolska in 1851, tried to form a Polish parish in the United States. It was hard to find enough material to make Jerzykowicz and Maciejewski objects of interest when future historians picked up their trails. For one priest alone it can hardly be said that Bishop Lefevre would not turn down the distinction of being the founder of the first Polish temple of worship in the United States. As it was, in 1852, two years before Panna Maria, Texas, achieved that honor, Bishop Lefevre brought Rev. Maciejewski to the Diocese of Detroit. Because Parisville did not exist when Maciejewski entered Bishop Lefevre's jurisdiction, the first Polish church in Michigan wasn't established there until 1858. Five Polish settlers arrived in 1855, and the number increased four fold the following year. Chiefly by careful drainage and axes they tamed the wild land.
No effort was made again in the first Polish colony of Michigan to attract Father Maciejewski. In 1858, while Rev. Peter Kluck, supposedly related to one of the Polish swamplanders, clawed his way on foot to conduct Mass in the forests of Parisville, Bishop Lefevre transferred Maciejewski to St. Alphonsus German parish at Dearborn, five miles west of Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until 1860.
Bishop Lefevre was proud of the fact that the German congregations in his diocese were doing very well. "There is," he wrote on April 2, 1860, "a difficulty in finding clergymen who speak the various languages. Monroe is taken care of sufficiently until a clergyman can be obtained for them." It meant that the pastorate of St. Michael the Archangel, the second oldest Catholic church in Monroe County, Michigan, was vacant. Actually, the first effort years earlier to organize a separate Catholic church for the German families in the city of Monroe was futile. In 1855, Rev. Peter Kronenberg, who belonged to the religious order of Redemptorists, formed a German congregation in the city of Monroe, approximately 26 miles south of Detroit. The palatial residence of George B. Harleston, who had been the first mayor and banker of Monroe, was handed to him, and he used it as a temporary church, school and pastoral residence. After the church was consecrated Sept. 29, 1852, it suffered hard times and the Redemptorists tried to close it. But the bishop stopped it. He transferred one German speaking priest after another to take care of the parish. Due to his poor health, it is impossible to determine how long Father Maciejewski was stationed in Monroe. In his place the bishop sent Rev. Peter Stenzel in 1862 to attend St. Michael's. Father Maciejewski died May 25, 1865, at St. Mary's Hospital, and was buried at Mt. Elliott Cemetery, both in Detroit.
Source: Edward Pinkowski -- [email protected] (2010)