Polish settlers, squatters and a failed land grant on the Illinois frontier (Rock River, 1830s)

In the 1830s, a group of Polish political exiles and emigrants tried to create a kind of “second Poland” on the Illinois frontier, using a large land grant on the Rock River. On paper they owned tens of thousands of acres; in reality they ran into American squatters, speculators and courts, and the whole project slowly dissolved into lawsuits and forgotten maps. This linked short piece (in Polish) is based mainly on local American sources and land records, comparing what the documents say with how little of this survived in Polish memory.

Full text (in Polish): [link on medium.com]