Bartosz, Rev. Simon
(1810 -- Jan. 28, 1872)
pioneer priestNothing is found about Father Simon Bartosz in Kruszka's A History of the Poles in America to 1908 and Bolek's Who's Who in Polish America. Yet, thankfully, I was favored with an obituary of Father Bartosz I sought from the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, which Kruszka and Bolek were unable to find. On February 7, 1872, the Weekly Sentinel -- Fort Wayne's first newspaper -- said that Bartosz was born in Poznan, Poland. "His father," it continued, "was a well-to-do farmer, who took pride in educating his children -- believing that learning was the great equalizer, and that the man who has a fund of academic information can vie with the possessor of a fortune. Therefore his son was sent to school at Warsaw -- that historic city, immortalized in song and romance and in the record of battles lost and won -- that great intellectual center has produced so many profound scholars, so many patriotic statesmen, so many world-famed warriors.
"Here it was that the subject of our sketch laid the foundation of his learning; and here it was that he enlisted under the battle-flag of Poland when that country, after chafing for long, miserable years under the tyrannical sway of Russia -- her conqueror -- at last unsheathed the sword and declared her independence. But wrong is strong and the forces of the Czar marched from victory to victory, over the ruins of happy homes and the dead bodies of their victims; and when the last soldier had surrendered, the leaders of the insurrection were banished to Siberia.
"It was at this period that Bartosz entered a monastery and began the study of theology and philosophy."
At the same time, Father Bartosz felt at home in Fort Wayne, where German families had begun to settle after the Wabash and Erie Canal was opened to traffic, because it had a daily German language newspaper and another weekly newspaper. None of them, however, exist. The exact date of his birth and the names of his parents are unknown. Although he was educated in a Franciscan monastery, he was ordained on March 26, 1836, by the Bishop of Warsaw and was permitted to hold services for about five years in secular churches in the Diocese of Poznan. Also unknown is exactly the year he was able to land in Milwaukee, where he had charge of a congregation until 1859. For the first time, in 1857, his name is mentioned in the history of Freedonia, Wisconsin, when he celebrated Mass and administered the sacraments in Mater Dolorosa Catholic Church.
He received a passport in 1859, which meant he was in the United States at least five years, and traveled through several South American countries, where he studied the laws and customs of the people. Then, the Ft. Wayne paper noted, he sailed to Australia and was attached to the Diocese of Wellington, New Zealand, where in 1860 Pope Gregory XVI entrusted the missionary labors of New Zealand and the islands of the Western Pacific, including New Guinea, to the bishop of Wellington. Bishop Viard in turn asked Father Bartosz, on the way to Papua, New Guinea, to do missionary work primarily among the black people on the island. Although Portugese and Spanish navigators visited New Guinea and explored it since the 16th century, little was known of the Papuans, the first of whom were believed to have moved out of Africa, until Father Bartosz made himself familiar with the Papuan language.
"While in the discharge of his duties," said the Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, "he made himself familiar with the native tongue -- that of the Papuans; and prepared and had published, the first and only grammar of their language." Apparently he lost his work on the Papuan language in a fire later and lost an opportunity for fame.
Owing to ill health, he returned to the United States. Plans were made on January 8, 1857, when, by a decree of Pope Pius IX, the northern half of Indiana was erected into the diocese of Fort Wayne. It contained fourteen priests and twenty churches. It meant that Bishop John Henry Luers, who came from Germany in 1833, needed at least half a dozen priests to fill the vacancies in his diocese. Wherever he went, whether on horseback, stagecoach, boat, or train, Bishop Luers appealed for priests to serve the Catholics in his diocese. One of the priests who did not turn a deaf ear to the call was Father Bartosz.
No other Polish priest was in the diocese. Father Bartosz was the first pastor of St. Matthias (later Martin) Catholic Church to remain at Hanover Centre, ten miles inland from Lake Michigan, in Lake County, without going back to Chicago by train. For many years the German settlers in Hanover Township attended divine services at the little Catholic village of St. John in Lake County. In 1859 they erected their own church, 20 by 30 feet, and the parishioners took turns hosting the visiting priests in their homes. They received Father Bartosz with joy, marriages were solemnized, and children were baptized with decorum. Whenever he had an opportunity he visited Polish families in the countryside to serve their religious needs.
As time went on, Father Bartosz planned to build a priest's house at Hanover Centre, but, on account of its location, not all Catholics in the county were in favor of it. Thus he did not have a place except the church to store his memorabilia and personal belongings. It was at this time that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in the nation's capital. On May 1, 1865, when Lincoln's funeral train stopped for water at Otis, Indiana, thousands of mourners were able to go on the train to pay their last respects to the fallen president. One wonders whether Father Bartosz and the Polish settlers at Otis visited the funeral train. If he had any souvenir of it, he lost it in 1866 when the church at Hanover Centre was destroyed by fire.
Little is known of all the Polish settlements in the Diocese of Fort Wayne. "In Indiana," wrote Piotr Kiolbassa in 1869,"there are places where Poles live, but I do know the names of those villages." About fifty Polish families belonged to a German parish, St. Joseph's, in La Porte. After Father Bartosz lost not only his passport and other valuable papers but also his house of worship, Bishop Luers transferred him to St. Joseph's Catholic Church at La Porte, where he remained there three years and two months.
As often as he could, in a cumbersome farm wagon or on horseback, he visited the Polish settlers at Otis, including the home of Jacob Lewandowski, to celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments. During the summer months the faithful would kneel on mother earth and worship with Father Bartosz in their mother tongue. He was succeeded in January 1870 by the Rev. John H. Oechtering, who three years later, with the help of Father Szulak, a Jesuit missionary, organized the first Polish parish in Indiana at Otis. As it was, until Father Piotr Koncz arrived at Otis, Father Bartosz was the only Polish priest in the Diocese of Fort Wayne. He had a lingering illness and died in the hospital at Ft. Wayne.
Because Notre Dame was like a blessing from heaven, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the religiou order in South Bend, Indiana, would provide the Bishop of Fort Wayne with enough priests to serve the Polish churches still to come in Indiana. As Father Kruszka noted in the 1908, there were about 33,000 Poles in 39 settlements,18 Polish churches, and 15 Polish priests in Indiana. The brightness of Father Bartosz's labors was like a sunburst in Lake County, Indiana, where in 160 years the white population grew from 1,466 to 323,290 and the black population from two to 122,723 souls.
From: Edward Pinkowski -- [email protected] (2010)