STANLEY — On November 5, the Stanley Historical Society Museum became a place of connection across time and continents as a delegation of mayors from cities in Poland visited to learn about the area’s rich Polish heritage. The visit was part of a cultural exchange program organized by the Chippewa Falls Rotary Club, which brought the officials to communities throughout the Chippewa Valley.
The guests were welcomed by former Stanley Mayor David Jankoski, who also serves as president of the Stanley Historical Society. Standing among displays of old photographs, farm tools, and family memorabilia, Jankoski shared the remarkable story of how Polish immigrants helped shape the Stanley area more than a century ago.
Jankoski began by recounting the difficult history that drove so many Poles to leave their homeland. He explained that Poland was partitioned several times in the late 18th century by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, leaving many citizens facing poverty, limited freedoms, and bleak futures. By the mid-1800s, millions sought opportunity abroad — and the expanding United States offered promise and freedom.
“The country was growing fast, and there was a great demand for labor,” Jankoski told the visitors. “But the Polish people came later than other immigrant groups, so they often got the toughest jobs — in the mines, the tanneries, the mills, and the forests.”
His own great-grandfather was among those who made the journey, sailing from Bremen, Germany, to America before eventually settling in Wisconsin. The family’s story mirrored many others who followed the same path — working in tanneries, logging camps, or railroads before
According to Jankoski, early Polish settlers arrived in the Stanley and Thorp area around the turn of the 20th century. Many were drawn north from industrial cities like Chicago and Milwaukee by newspaper advertisements offering inexpensive farmland in the newly cleared timber country of Wisconsin.
One such ad, Jankoski noted with a smile, offered “a free household and a cow” to anyone who purchased 80 acres near Stanley for $8 per acre. “It was hard work,” he said. “They cleared the land by hand, often building a home and barn under one roof and working long winters in the woods to buy another cow or horse in the spring.”
The new settlers brought with them a deep Catholic faith, leading to the founding of local parishes that remain part of the region’s cultural heart. Our Lady of Czestochowa, built in 1908 just north of Stanley, and St. Hedwig’s Church near Thorp became spiritual and social centers for the growing Polish community.
The group went on to visit the four generation Ciolkosz farm in the Town of Thorp before visits in Thorp.