"Ocolika" - Riverside

"Ocolika," - Riverside: "the little world"

Submitted by Dr. Paul Loatman,
City Historian

St. Patrick's Day special dinners and the "Fifteenth of August" festivities serve as annual reminders of the heritage of two of the largest ethnic groups in Mechanicville. But, there is little evidence today about another group which was also active and prominent and from which many local residents are descended. Part of the problem involves even figuring out if members of this group were "Polish" or "Lithuanian." Some explanation is in order.

Because Lithuania did not exist as a separate country until 1918 (it later disappeared again when the Soviet Union absorbed it in 1940), and because they spoke the Polish language, Lithuanians were often misidentified by immigration and census officials as "Polish." Part of the wave of so-called "new immigrants," these people began emigrating to the United States in the 1890's. In communities across the country at this time, hostility to "new immigrants" was intense, based upon the fact that the newcomers were Catholic, non-English speaking, and clannish "birds of passage" who intended to return to their homelands after working here temporarily. All this usually assured the immigrants that they would be relegated to the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole, working as mobile "day laborers" who were forced to wander from job to job. What was highly unusual in Mechanicville was the fact that the Lithuanian-Polish group found regular employment in the local paper mill well from the onset of their movement here.

Documentation is lacking, but it is logical to assume that this group was recruited specifically to work at the paper mill plant. While most older residents readily recall the Westvaco plant's prominence in the local economy, younger people need to be reminded that the West Virginia Company's mill employed 1300 workers in its heyday at its plant and offices on North Main Street, site of the current Price Chopper Plaza, DeCrescente's Beverages, and the NYSEG dam and neighboring buildings. Finding a regular job there early in this century was an achievement for "new immigrants. " Interestingly enough, no two Lithuanian families came from the same village in the homeland, according to naturalization papers filed with the County Clerk between 1896 and 1946, strongly suggesting that these workers migrated elsewhere in the United States before arriving in Mechanicville. This was quite difference from the case with many Italians who migrated directly here from the homeland.

At the outbreak of the World War in 1914, 10% of Mechanicville's population of 8700 were first or second generation Polish-speaking immigrants, many of whom were Lithuanians residing in Rive4side near the paper mill. Their nationality is inferred from the fact that most of those who were later naturalized as citizens debarked from Vilnius, the capital of modern-day Lithuania. The group organized a St. John's Society ethnic benevolent society, celebrated special feast days publicly, and was numerous enough that St. Paul's parish was visited regularly by Polish-speaking priests who administered the sacraments in the native tongue. During the 1920's, self-appointed spokesmen for the group protested to the Catholic Bishop, Edmund Gibbons, that their spiritual needs were being ignored by local Irish priests. However, the size of the group never expanded to the point that it merited the creation of an ethnic Catholic parish as the Italian group was able to do here in 1919.

The center of the nationality's community revolved around St. John's Hall in Riverside, a hub of ethnic activity in the first quarter of this century. During the devastating "Spanish flu" epidemic of 1918 which killed half a million Americans in a few weeks, the Hall served as a temporary hospital, implying that the pandemic raged more virulently in one part of the community than in other parts. Originally limiting membership to Lithuanians, the St. John's Society was expanded later to include all Polish language groups, and as such, the society remained active until after World War 11.

The events surrounding World War I had an immediate and negative impact on the Polish speaking community here since a significant number of its members returned home to fight in the war. The size of the immigrant community leveled off and began to decline from that point onward, a decline furthered by the passage of anti-immigration laws by Congress in the xenophobic 1920's. How quickly the impact of these laws (which almost completely stopped the immigration of southern and eastern Europeans to the U.S.) was felt locally is seen in the comment made by the Mechanicville Superintendent of Schools in 1924 that the character of the local school population would change drastically as a result. Recognizing the challenge presented by the presence of non-English speaking children whose attendance was required by recently-passed compulsory school-attendance laws, the School Board at this time initiated a policy of offering financial bonuses to teachers who could successfully complete a full-year of service in the elementary schools on Saratoga Avenue or in Riverside, the neighborhoods with the largest concentrations of immigrants. The persistence of the Polish group, however, remained strong, and in 1959, the last year that an elementary school was open in Riverside, over 70% of the students enrolled there were Slavic surnamed.

It is not unusual to find local residents of Irish or Italian extraction who have visited "the old country." However, for the better part of this century, Poland and Lithuania were behind the Iron Curtain and travel there was prohibited until quite recently. With the flow of immigrants cut off in the 1920's and communication with the old country virtually impossible since 1940, any connections between immigrant offspring and the original homeland were impossible to sustain, and the identity of the ethnic community here was short-circuited as well, especially in the absence of any ethnic fraternal organization to keep the flame alive locally. The closing of the paper mill and the decline of the railroads as local employers further accentuated the trend. Older ethnic families may preserve some holiday food and religious traditions, and a quick review of the local phone book reveals a fair number of Slavic names. But, like the Irish before them, Polish-speaking immigrants and their offspring, once so identifiable and prominent as a group, have assimilated and blended into the larger community. In Mechanicville, the "melting pot" has won out over the "mixing pot" in characterizing the history of one of our most prominent ethnic groups. Whether or not the same is true with Italian migration here will be examined in subsequent articles.