Father Jozef Dąbrowski, the Orchard Lake Schools and the Shaping of Polish American Catholicism

The Orchard Lake Schools have their origin in the “Polish Seminary” founded in 1884 in Detroit, Michigan by Father Jozef Dabrowski, one of the most important figures in the history of Polish America. In addition to founding the seminary, he is one of the founders of the Polish American parochial school system and the priest who brought the Felician Sisters—The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix—to the United States. They were to staff more than 40% of all Polish parochial schools in the United States by the mid-twentieth century.

Joseph Dąbrowski was born in Źoltance in Russian Poland January 19, 1842 to a family of minor gentry. His father was an agronomist. The village where he was born was on the boundary between eastern and western Christianity and on a border that was beginning to be more and more sharply defined by ethnicity. As he grew to maturity the key issues of the day were the social question and national independence. As a result of the partitions of Poland the social question of peasant emancipation and land distribution became intertwined with the national question of independence. The national question, in turn, became enmeshed with the issue of the role and place of Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Jews and Ukrainians in an independent Poland. For Joseph Dąbrowski, and his contemporaries, these were vital matters that occupied their minds and hearts and irrevocably shaped their worldview.¹

He was also raised at a time when the Polish intelligentsia began gradually moving away from its earlier mystical romanticism toward a budding new positivism and a fascination with science. His father’s background in engineering and agronomy helped to point the young man’s interests from early on in the direction of science, mathematics and technology. He immersed himself in these subjects. This deep interest gave him a distinct approach to issues that marked him off from his fellow Polish clergy in America. It certainly shaped his pedagogical views as well.

When it came time to leave home for higher education, the twenty-year-old Dąbrowski came to Warsaw to the newly established Wysza Szkoła (Higher School) and enrolled in the mathematics faculty. The precision of mathematics fascinated him. If he had completed his studies he would likely have made a career as an engineer or a teacher of science and mathematics. He kept his love for these things to the end of his life.

Years later in the United States he became the author of the first textbook on arithmetic for Polish-American parochial schools. Reflecting those same interests he also wrote a book on physical geography and most interestingly on practical scientific gardening titled, Gardening For All.² He had a special attraction to mineralogy and astronomy and in particular electro-technical matters. Toward the end of his life, Father Dabrowski characteristically remarked to his friend Father Jan Pitass in Buffalo (where he had gone to see the International Exposition), “Now, thank God, now that everything as worked out well and I have mastered many things—I can even understand electricity well—I am ready to die.”³

Shortly after Joseph Dąbrowski arrived in Warsaw in the fall of 1862, he became embroiled in revolutionary politics. Apparently under the influence of Władyslaw Daniłowski, a leading figure among the radicals, Dąbrowski joined an elite partisan band of sixty students organized to provide a bodyguard for the revolutionary Ludwik Mierosławski, who was coming back to Russian Poland from France to lead the uprising. The students who were to be the future officers of the people’s army when the revolution reached its full strength met Mierosławski near the Prussian border three weeks after the uprising broke out in January 1863. The meeting with Mieroslawski was poorly planned and poorly timed, as was the whole insurrection. The Russians quickly ran the partisans to ground.

Mierosławski’s bodyguard fought desperate battles at Krzywosąd and Nowa Wieś to cover his retreat. He left the country after only three days. Dąbrowski had...