Posted on 05/21/2012 9:22:26 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Land awarded to a Polish freedom fighter more than 200 years ago by a grateful United States has been turned into a park bearing the name of the man who spent his life championing liberty and equality in America and Poland.
The 36-acre Thaddeus Kosciuszko Park in Dublin, which opened this month, was part of a grant of 500 acres awarded by Congress for Kosciuszkos contributions as a military engineer and Continental Army colonel during the Revolutionary War.
Alex Storozynski, president and executive director of the Kosciuszko Foundation based in New York, said Kosciuszko was ahead of his time in standing up for the rights of the oppressed including slaves, women, peasants and American Indians.
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
Funny---I have a dear friend of 30 years whose parents were both born in Poland. She looks very much like a female version of Kosciuszko.
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He built the fortifications at West Point.
Due to conflicting Crown grants among the various colonies, disposition of lands beyond the Appalachians was a real mess. It was the reason Maryland did not join the Confederation until March 1781, just a few months before Yorktown.
Anyway, while the US government had no money, it ended up with lots of land with which to “pay the Debts,” including back pay to soldiers.
Indeed...while our Continental Army did not lack courage, fortitude and great leaders like Washington, Greene, Knox, Putnam, Mercer, Stirling, et. al., it DID lack military engineers. Kosciusko brought this...and more.
The Feds also eventually paid pensions to veterans, but they had to appear in court and provide proof that they fought.
One of my ancestors was already on the Western Pennsylvania frontier at the time of the Revolution, volunteering for a militia outfit. After the war he pushed West into Ohio, where he volunteered again for the War of 1812. He sure didn’t have much use for the English. :-))
Great stuff...may I inquire if that ancestor was of German or Scottish (or other) background? I ask because many of the Western PA colonists were German, and many of them were pacifists; they recruited others to form militias out there, with Hugh Mercer one of the Scots who went there to fight.
He left his American estate for the manumission and education of slaves but Jefferson never executed the will. The Supreme Court and Chief Justice Taney, the infamous author of the Dred Scott decision, ruled the money belonged to his Polish heirs.
He would be very proud of the modern free, independent and democratic Poland, although his birthplace is now in Belarus.
The guy must have liked a good fight, volunteering in two wars. That sounds Scotch-Irish, doesn't it? :-))
Yep...sounds like Scots-Irish to me, to be sure. Those boys seldom walked away from a fight. They played a big part during the RevWar...(as you undoubtedly know).
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