First Polish family established community

By KATE ZDROIK The Rosholt Record Most ethnic groups in communities around Wisconsin can trace their origins to one person or family or one group of immigrants. In the case of the Polish in Portage County the person who started the settlement of central Wisconsin was Michael von Koziczkowski. Historical records point to Koziczkowski as having arrived in this area in 1857. Koziczkowski was from Dantzic, West Prussia (Poland had been split up and was not recognized as a country at the time). He was, by all accounts, an educated, hardworking and wellliked man. Koziczkowski brought his large family to the United States on a ship which left German Poland on February 8, 1857. The family entered the U.S. in New York City and proceeded to travel to Chicago, where he heard that some Germans were moving to Marathon County. He then went on to Milwaukee where he learned more about the northern Wisconsin area. Koziczkowski then moved his family to Stevens Point. He reportedly explored some land in Marathon County, which he felt was unacceptable for him and his family, before purchasing land from a German immigrant, Joseph Oesterle. Koziczkowski had written to friends about the land he had found and by 1858 three more Polish families had joined him in central Wisconsin. These families were headed by Adam Klesmit, John Zynda and Joseph Platte. These four families formed the core of the community that would become known as Polonia. Life was not easy in the early days of those pioneer families. The nearest place for the families to get any supplies was Ellis, about 3 miles west. The first country store to be established in Polonia appears to have begun in 1877 by Joe Bishop, a German immigrant married to a Polish woman. (Bishops original name was Bischoff, which meant bishop in German). In 1957 local writer Malcolm Rosholt interviewed Koziczkowskis youngest and only surviving child, Martha Cecelia Liebe, whose husband was Frank Liebe and who lived until the age of 93 in her own home near Collins Lake (previously known as Fish Lake). Mrs. Liebe had very little schooling and had taught herself to read, write and speak English, and though her English was quite broken, Rosholt was able to get a picture of what her life was like as one of the members of the pioneering family. Liebe was one of only four Koziczkowski children born in the United States, she had fourteen siblings, though five of them had died in infancy. She said that her father was an intelligent man who knew five languages; German, Polish, French, Latin and Swedish. Koziczkowski was known to be an early horticulturist who ordered and planted pear and apple trees from the his native land and established his own orchard. One of each were known to still be alive and bearing fruit in 1959. When Koziczkowski arrived in central Wisconsin there were few farmers and hired work was hard to find. When he could find work, he made 25 cents a day, while his wife would often be paid in loaves of bread. By the time he had died in 1882, at the age of 71, Koziczkowski owned 480 acres of land. Liebe remembers working as a young girl on her fathers farm driving the horses and oxen to work the land. She made sugar from maple sap because for many years they could not find sugar in the stores. When sugar did arrive it was first brown sugar and eventually white sugar came onto the shelves. The pioneer families could not buy flour in the store either so they raised their own wheat and rye and hauled it to the mill in Nelsonville to have it ground. The family also raised sheep and spun their own wool into yarn and knitted clothing for themselves. Liebe sold socks, gloves and mittens to the store in Amherst. She was paid up to 50 cents per pair for mittens with straps and linings. Liebe married Frank Liebe, who ran a threshing business, when she was 15. Since Liebes work meant he had to travel from farm to farm to complete the threshing, Liebe found herself at home a great deal, which she didnt mind, in fact, she preferred it. In the first years

of married life she worked on local farms for 15 cents a day. Her husband raised potatoes for two years but because he didnt haul them to market until spring he was paid only 3 cents a bushel rather than 10 cents a bushel which he would have received in fall, eventually he stopped growing them for sale. The couple received 25 cents a bushel for wheat and rye and 15 cents a bushel for oats, but were unable to sell their corn. Pioneers like the Liebes and Koziczkowskis sawed their own lumber by hand using a whipsaw. The difficulties of growing up and raising a family in the pioneer setting made Liebe, and others like her, very strong and self-sufficient individuals. Until about two years before her death, Liebe still owned and milked a cow and knitted she was 91 years old. (Informtion for this article was gathered from writings of Malcolm Rosholt and the Portage County Historical Society)