Immigrants to the Midwest

Employees of Oliver Chilled Plow Works

This page was originally “Polish Immigrants of the Midwest”. It has been expanded to include additional immigrants from other countries.

This continuing work began in 1995 as an endeavor to document the roots of my ancestors from the various partitions of 18th century Poland to St Joseph County, Indiana. I enjoyed the initial discovery of my own roots so much and the many kind souls who helped me along the way; that I decided to document the migration of any Polish family to the area as a “Thank You”, to those who helped me. Since I descended from a typical Polish family of 12 and 14 children on either side, I soon discovered myself related to most of “South Bend Polonia”. In addition many of my Immediate and Great generations married into the multitude of multi ethnic families that made up early 1900 industrial South Bend.

Therefore the user of this data will find German, Pole, Hungarian, Belgian and Italian families traced as near to their European origins as possible. Many good people have taken the time to send me extensions to the many families identified and have corrected my work when necessary. They are all credited for their contributions and I encourage any user to contribute and correct “as the spirit moves you”.

New data is updated quarterly and the current file contains more than 68,229 unique entries from nearly every mid-western state and most of European origins. .

Good Hunting,
Jim Piechorowski
jamespiech@aol.com