HP
108. Polonia in the Press: Articles from the Baltimore American
& Commercial Daily Advertiser, 1870-1899. Baltimore History
Class, 2004. 243 pages,indexed,
illustrated, paper. $9.99 [ISBN 1-8871-2436-5]
The
students in the "History of Baltimore" class at UMBC were
each assigned one year of the Baltimore American & Commercial
Daily Advertiser for the period 1870 to 1899. The assignment required
them to find any article that mentioned the Polish Community, Polish
people and/or Polish Organizations in Maryland. The students were
given a lesson in how to identify Polish surnames and alerted to
the fact that they may encounter variant spellings due to miscommunication
on the part of the reporter and interviewee and/or witness.
The
class found a remarkable number of articles that otherwise would
have remained hidden because this newspaper is not indexed. The
sheer number of items the students amassed and the coverage given
to Maryland Polonia by this one local newspaper undercuts the statement
by one of the editors of an early Polish language newspaper, Friends
of the Hearth, who stated, "... these foreigners write
only for themselves and about themselves and not a word about us...."
Since none of Baltimore's early Polish language press for this time
period is known to exist these full text articles contained herein
become all the more important to the history of Maryland's Polonia.
Thus, this volume adds significantly to recovering this forgotten
past.
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