by Cliff Sakry, with editing, research and additions by Mark Keith Sakry  © 2002

ANCESTRY

Getting to the roots of it.  A look at the origins of our Sakry clan ... how I, and every other Sakry in this country, happen to be here.  Some notes and accounts of those brave progenitors who risked everything and gave up their homeland to bring our name and our seed out of hopeless 19th century old-world servitude and oppression into this bright new freedom-land of equality, opportunity and good will.  How the "brothers three" founded the three great branches of the Sakry family in America.

LEAP TO FREEDOM

THE BROTHERS THREE

The history of the Sakry clan in America began with the successive arrivals of three intrepid Polish brothers ... Paul P., Andrew and Adam Sakry ... who emigrated to the United States from the village of Komprachcice, near the city of Opole (Opeln) in Polish Silesia between 1870 and 1882.

Actually, Poland did not exist as a sovereign state in those desperate years, having long before been swallowed up by its several powerful neighbor nations in the historic (and infamous) Partitions. (See Addendum 3 for a brief history of Poland)  Thus, although the Silesian people had adhered stubbornly to their Polish language and traditions, they dwelt under the harsh rule of militarist Germany and were required to speak the German language, attend German schools, and profess fealty to the German crown ... all of which they did with quiet reluctance and loathing.

Especially, apparently, the Sakrys.  They were a hardy, restless, free-spirited breed of commoners, devoutly Catholic, stubbornly patriotic to their own nationality, and passionately resentful of every effort of the ”enemy occupation authority” to Germanize them and their fellow Poles.  They especially hated the frequent conscription of Polish manhood into the German army every time the drums of war sounded among the rival European powers.  It is known that my grandfather, Adam, youngest of the three brothers, spent some time in the German army (a fact disclosed by an only picture of Adam, in the uniform of a German soldier, which once hung in the living room of Adam's eldest son, my uncle Joseph Sakry, at St. Cloud, Minnesota, where I used to see it as a boy, but which has since disappeared through some relative’s careless indifference.)

Among the European peasantry during the nineteenth century, news of free America’s open and generous immigration policy circulated widely ... promising unprecedented liberty and opportunity for all who came to its friendly shores.  This must have been a tempting prospect indeed to the many who hated the confinement, frustration and empty life of the suppressed common class.  As history as shown, countless thousands heeded the siren call, and one can only try to imagine what kind of hopeless desperate privation could have driven men and women to depart their beloved homeland forever and blindly take their chances in a strange, far distant, unknown land.

In Robert Prokott’s work, Silesia To America – A Heritage, Polish Silesian Settlement in Central Minnesota (see Addendum 3), Prokott writes:

By the Treaty of Breslau in 1741, all of Lower Silesia and most of Upper Silesia came under the Prussian rule of Frederick the Great.  Prussian rule ultimately became German rule and Silesia remained under German rule until 1945.  Following World War II it again became a part of Poland and so remains at the present time.  Opole is the chief city in Upper Silesia. ---  The Prussian government made no serious attempts to suppress the cultures and language of the area until Bismarck came into power.  In the1860’s under Bismarck’s rule, school instruction was required to be in the German language.  Bismarck also felt that the Pope in Rome was a threat to his rule and attempted to suppress the Catholic faith of Silesia.  These actions, along with poor economic times and letters from Father Xavier Pierz that extolled the virtues of central Minnesota, led to a large migration to America.

Apparently the town of Komprachcice (which at one time was called Comprachtschutz and before that Gumpertsdorf) is in or near a coal mining district near Opole, for at least one of the brothers, Adam, had a job as a coal miner or coal ”handler.”