The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was created in 1772 with the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and awarded to the Habsburg Empress Maria-Theresa. It’s borders coincided roughly with the former medieval Principality of Galicia-Volhynia. It became the largest, most populous and northernmost province of the Austrian Empire until the dissolution of that monarchy in 1918 at the end of World War 1.
In 1867 following the Battle of Sadowa and the Austro-Prussian War, the Austrian Empire was reformed into the dualist Austria-Hungary. This began the slow liberalization of Austrian rule in Galicia. By 1873, Galicia was de facto and autonomous province of Austria-Hungary with Polish and Ukrainian as official languages. Galicia was subject to the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, but the provincial administration had extensive control, especially in education, culture and the administration of local affairs. This was the country into which Catherine was born. Like the majority of the country, her native language was Polish and she was likely an ethnic Pole but she was born into the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a semi-autonomous province of the Austro-Hungrarian Empire.
Beginning in the 1880’s, a mass emigration of the Galician peasantry occurred. Termed the Great Economic Emigration, it was caused by the backward economic conditions of Galicia where rural poverty was widespread. The emigration began in the western, Polish-populated part of Galicia and then shifted east to the Ukrainian inhabited parts. Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Germans all participated in this mass movement of the rural poor. The Poles migrated principally to New England and the midwestern United States, but also to Brazil and elsewhere. Several hundred thousand people were involved this mass exodus of the Galician poor. The emigration of Catherine with her cousins Catherine (LNU) and Elizabeth (LNU) were very much a part of this emigration story.
The emigration from Galicia grew more intense until interupted in 1914 by the opening of hostilities in World War 1. During the war, Galicia saw very heavy fighting between the forces of Russia and the Central Powers. The Russian forces overran most of the region in 1914 after defeating the Austro-Hungarian army in a chaotic frontier battle in the opening months of the war. The Russian army was pushed out in the spring and summer of 1915 by a combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive. Catherine and her cousins immigrated to the US only two years before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. The oral tradition in our family is that Catherine’s father Michol was killed during WW1. If the date of his death recorded by my father and uncle (1914) is accurate, he was killed during the outbreak of hostilities with the initial Russian invasion.
