ZAWISTOWSKI, REV. JOHN IGNATZ (August 11, 1822 - July 9, 1889)Catholic priest. The first Zawistowski in the United States almost led fourteen scattered families from Bydgoszcz, Poland, to build the first Polish colony in the land of the stars and stripes. When the Rev. John I. Zawistowski first trod on American soil, the families who wanted to buy good land, build houses, farms, industries, and start a Polish colony were working in the hard coal mines and rolling mills of Pennsylvania. Their agent was Joseph Gloskowski, a baker in Philadelphia, who in 1852 organized a society of Polish refugees in New York. After hunting almost a year, the best land they found so far for an investment near Buffalo, New York. "Father Zawistowski went there," Henry Dmochowski, then a sculptor in Philadelphia, wrote in Polish to a friend on June 18,1853. "The whole situation has potential," he continued, "because a group of farmers can organize and start a nice and rich Polish village."
As it turned out, the dreams of the Polish families and Father Zawistowski blew away like leaves on a gust of wind. Whether the Polish priest remained in and around Hamburg, south of Buffalo, where the best farmlands were available, he concealed himself in the diocese of Buffalo. Dmochowski, who carved the busts of Pulaski and Kosciuszko that now sit in a vestibule of the nation's capitol, was the first person, so far as I know, to mention his name. Then, in 1855, when Father Zawistowski was discovered, he was pastor of Saints Peter and Paul's Catholic Church, founded in 1844 by 22 German families who bought an old wooden church in Hamburg from a Baptist congregation for $650. For a while Redemptorist priests from Buffalo celebrated Mass in the church every two weeks.
Although the Catholic Almanac for 1857-60 said he was in Elysville, New York, five miles from the Buffalo post office, the length of time he spent in the village is uncertain. The bishop of Buffalo shuffled priests -- 25 in thirty-five years -- in and out of St. Joseph's Catholic Church for very short terms. Sometimes there was no pastor in Elysville. Early records were not well kept.
The German parishes in the diocese of Buffalo grew rapidly as people came in great numbers from all parts of Germany. St. Mary's Catholic Church in Lancaster, under the guidance of Father Zawistowski just before the Civil War, was hardly different from St. Francis Xavier in Black Rock, where he was pastor from January 21, 1859, until July 5, 1861. He laid out a small cemetery and the ringing of a church bell he bought was hailed with delight in the village. By 1849 the German Catholics of Buffalo established their third house of worship, known first as St. John the Baptist and then St. Boniface, and in the years to come, when saloons were also grocery stores, where beer was sold for four cents a pint, there was a saying, spoken only in German, that when someone from St. Boniface parish bought a pint of beer, he saved a penny out of a nickle for the church. In 1863, while Father Zawistowski was pastor of St. Boniface, he was naturalized in Buffalo's Superior Court.
It was not the only change in his life. Due to the influence of the German saloons, he left Buffalo and in January, 1866, was appointed by the bishop of the Erie diocese in Pennsylvania pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic church in Brookville, a village of 1,366 and the seat of government of Jefferson County, 165 miles from the state capital. The mover and shaker of the remote congregation, called Immaculate Conception, was John Dougherty, who came from Donegal, Ireland, and laid out Brookville in 1832 with other investors. When the Susequehanna and Waterford turnpike ran through Brookville, Dougherty opened not only the first post office but also the first hotel, with a quaint sign, "Peace and Poverty," on it, and equipped it with a piano. When missionaries came to Dougherty's place, which was both a hotel or a home, respectively, the piano served as the altar upon which the servants of God said Mass.
As more Catholics settled in Brookville, the congregation was so mixed, consisting as it did of Irish, German, Belgian, and other immigrants, that the bishop of Erie found it difficult to find the right priest to minister to their spiritual wants. In addition, when bricklayers were not paid for their work, the brick church they built was sold for less than $300 in 1855 to satisfy their lien. For years indebtedness dogged the Brookville congregation. Without looking for a way to wipe it out, Father Zawistowski resigned in February of 1866, while snow still covered the surrounding mountains, and disappeared. The Catholic Almanac reported that he worked in the diocese of Brooklyn from 1867 to 1868.
His activities in New York and Pennsylvania were a far cry from what they were in Plock, a large city on the left bank of the Vistula River, 59 miles (95 km) from Warsaw, where he grew up and acquired his early education. The University of Wurzburg in Bavaria, which he entered when he was 19 years old, thrust him into the Carmelite Order. He studied for the priesthood in Paris, France, 1841-1845. He left Paris on July 27, 1845, and spent the next six years in Bavaria. He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Georg Anton von Stahl of the Diocese of Wurzburg on December 19, 1846. He was transferred to Rome in 1851 and to Bombay, India, April 4, 1851; he remained there only a short time. Soon afterward he was in Philadelphia as is evident in an old letter.
Then, on September 21, 1869, after stations in three dioceses in the eastern part of the United States, Father Zawistowski found himself in Wausau, which stood for far away place in the Indian language, built on the left bank of the Wisconsin River by the lumber industry. He was the first pastor of St. Mary's parish, founded by German settlers in 1851, to live in Wausau and continued his services in several languages. In 1887, the Poles at Wausau, many of whom joined St. Mary's parish when Father Zawistowski was pastor, separated and established their own parish, St. Michael's, with the approval of the bishop of the Green Bay diocese.
In 1870, when Two Rivers, predominately a village of fishermen, on Lake Michigan, seven miles north of Manitowoc, needed a priest to hear the confessions of French Canadians and Polish settlers who were part of St. Luke's congregation, founded in 1851, Father Zawistowski, who was fluent in both Polish abd French, was transferred to the parish.
As it was in the lumber trade after the great Chicago fire in 1871, the jobs in the lumber mills in Oshkosh, the second largest city in Wisconsin, were gobbled up by many French Canadians and Polish immigrants. Naturally, Father Zawistowski, who was transferred to St. Mary's Catholic church at Oshkosh in 1873, provided services for them in German, French and Polish. Ironically, after smaller fires in Oshkosh, which destroyed a great deal of the German style of architecture, Father Zawistowski himself withdrew from the city in April of 1877.
His versatility -- for example, Portage, a German parish, 1879-1881; Beaver Dam, Polish, 1882; Stevens Point, Polish, 1883; Eagle, German, 1884-1885; and Highland, a Bohemian-German parish, 1885-1889 -- was unmatched by any other priest in Wisconsin. It's fair to say that he traveled to more unexpected places than any other circuit rider in his time. No one could imagine all he accomplished in his lifetime.
The written records that have come down to us include details of a very sad accident on Monday evening, May 16, 1889, when he was pastor of St. John Nepomucene church, built on land in Highland, a little village in the rolling hills of Iowa County, about 65 miles southwest of Madison, Wisconsin, transferred in 1860 to Bishop Henni of Milwaukee. Then, when Mary Huza, a 14 year-old girl of Bohemian ancestry, became very sick in Centerville, about four miles south of Highland John Jansen went for Father Zawistowski. The priest hopped into the back seat of a milk wagon, as a two-seat spring wagon was called, and before he sat down, Jansen cracked his whip or yelled "Giddy up." The horses jerked the wagon so quickly that Father Zawistowski fell backward over the seat to the ground. He suffered a broken neck and died the next morning.
After his death his body was placed in St. John Nepomucene church where it was viewed every day by hundreds of people. The funeral took place Friday and his remains were laid to rest in the parish cemetery. He is still revered today because nobody has put up a tombstone taller than the one on his grave. The Bohemian families who belonged to the church named after a Bohemian saint liked Father Zawistowski because he was the only pastor who was familiar with the Bohemian language and delivered Bohemian sermons.
Unfortunately Father Frederick Anthony Wambold, who succeeded the Polish priest, changed the course of history. Within one year, or two of his ordination, Father Wambold, who grew up in Saukville, Wisconsin, sold the rectory that Father Zawistowski occupied since August 19, 1885, and eliminated the annual picnics on August 15 when everybody -- Germans, Bohemians, and others -- listened to band music, played games, and drank beer -- often too much. Worst of all, he changed the name of the parish to St. Anthony of Padua and alienated the Bohemians in the parish. As is recorded, Father Peter Voissem began to keep records of the parish in 1860 -- perhaps in the name of St. Michael -- and Bishop Henni laid the cornerstone of St. John Nepomucene church on July 28, 1861. Eventually the Bohemians broke away from St. Anthony's parish and restored the old name. They built a house of worship at Upper Castle Rock, also known as Castle Rock Ridge, a little village twelve miles from Highland. They published a history of the parish on its 75th anniversary in 1954 when actually the first one of the same name was 94 years old. The second cemetery of the parish was laid out in Upper Castle Rock and the name of the cemetery in Highland, where Father Zawistowski's grave is, changed its name to St. Anthony's Cemetery.
Author: Edward Pinkowski - e-mail: [email protected] - (2011)
Zawistowski, Rev. John J.Clergyman. About 1855 pastor of SS. Peter and Paul parish, Hamburg, N.Y. and Lancaster, at Assumption, N.Y. In 1882 assistant at SS. Peter and Paul, parish, Stevens Point, Wis. Died May, 1889 in Buffalo, N.Y.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943
Zawistowsky, the Rev. John,was born in Polen in the year 1822. Nineteen years later he removed to Bavaria, acquiring a considerable portion of his education in the schools at Wuerzburg. He then entered the Carmelite Order, by whom he was sent to India where he worked for many years as a missionary. Finally, unable longer to stand the climate, he returned to Europe, from whence, having remained a brief period he departed for America. From 1885 to 1889 Father Zawistowsky was rector of St. John's congregation at highland, where he died on May 14 of the latter year.
From: Catholic Church in Wisconsin, p. 1058