THE EARLY HISTORY OF PANNA MARIA, TEXAS ... - Repositories

19
Texas took about two weeks.
From Indianola, the immigrants
turned inland toward San Antonio.
Having travelled overland through December weather
for more than three weeks, the Polish immigrants arrived
in San Antonio late that month.
Father Moczygemba
hastened from Castroville to meet them there and guide
them himself to their future home fifty-five miles to the
38 —
southeast.
Upon their arrival on the little plateau above the
two streams named San Antonio and Cibolo, the colonists
celebrated Christmas Mass under the largest tree of a
clump of oaks at the site.
The Mass served not only as a
rite of thanksgiving, but also as a petition to the Almighty
39
for strength to carry on in the face of adversity.
Having travelled for nine weeks by sea and for an
additional four weeks by land in an alien country, the
Upper Silesians were exhausted upon their arrival at the
site of their new settlement.
One of the original settlers
a few years later recalled the first days like this:
What we suffered here when we started!
We didn't have any houses, nothing but fields.
And for shelter, only bushes and trees. . . .
the church we had been promised in Europe wasn't
there, nor even one poor hut, nothing at all for
us to live in. . . . There was tall grass
38
Dworaczyk, The First Polish Colonies, pp. 2-4;
Kruszka, p. 365.
39 Dworaczyk, The First Polish Colonies, pp. 4-5.