Abstract
Although they came from the same geographical area in Europe, the paths of Poles and Jews very quickly diverged in the New World. The initial encounter between these two groups in the United States, which took place in the years between 1830 and 1880, was marked by considerable mutual sympathy and understanding. The Poles who went to America were for the most part fugitives from the unsuccessful national insurrections of 1830-1, 1846-8, and 1863-4, although there were also about a thousand peasant settlers from Upper Silesia who established themselves in southern Texas in the mid-1850s and a much smaller number