The J. William Gorski
Polish Historical & Genealogical Collection
At the Library of Michigan & Archives
By J. William Gorski
The Library of Michigan is located at 717 West Allegan Street, Lansing, MI 48909.
This collection was started in 1977 when I began my own family’s genealogical history. I found that in the 1970s there was not much history on the Polish people in the Michigan libraries.
I started collecting anything that could be found about the Polish. Then in 1981, I became the Editor-in-Chief of the Eaglet, which was the periodical for the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan. That encouraged me to work harder to find information about the Poles of Michigan.
I began by photographing all the Polish churches in Michigan. There are about 3,000 slides on this subject on this collection including about 250 jubilee books of Michigan’s Polish churches and societies.
There are over 30 years of the Polish Daily News and 30 years of the Pol-Am Journal including 20 years of obituaries from the Hamtramck Citizen, published with the permission from that paper’s president, Karen Spang.
With the help of Pamela L. Lazar, I was able to photograph all of the buildings on Michigan Avenue in Detroit starting at West Grand Boulevard to Wyoming Avenue.
In this collection, there are many county, town and city histories of Polish people. Many cemeteries in Michigan and Ontario, Canada, were recorded and included in this collection. This was done with the help of Pamela L. Lazar and Kathleen LaBudie-Szakall.
I must express much appreciation to Harry Milostan, James Tye and others who helped me with this collection and a thank you to Kathleen LaBudie-Szakall for typing this manuscript and Kenneth Merique for his proofreading talents.
The above mentioned are just a few of the items included in this collection. The Library of Michigan and Archives were chosen to house this collection because of its location in Michigan and its availability to those who wish to use the collection.
I would like to thank Randy J. Riley and Carol Callard who were very helpful in getting this collection into the Library of Michigan and Archives.
The abbreviation MA equals Michigan Archives.
