later in St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville and Cincinnati. From among them came engineers and writers and a number of soldiers in the American Civil War even though many were advanced in age at that date. Felix Paul Wierzbicki, M. D., was the author of one of the first books to be published in English in California (1849).20 Others of these Poles were later found from Texas to Canada, where one is reported to have become a Baronet.
Ludwik Chlopicki settled in St. Louis where the St. Louis Directory for the years 1836-7 lists him as operating a tavern at 30 Pine Street, at which time he was still acting as agent for his exiled group. That he was there earlier is proven by the date on his application for citizenship:
To the Honorable the Circuit Court of St. Louis County: Louis Chlopicki, an alien, who now wishes to become a citizen of the United States, reports that he is a native of Poland in the Province of Podolia in Poland, that he is forty years of age, that by birth he is a subject of Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia; that on the 17th of April in 1830 he left Poland and arrived in the United States on the 22nd of November, 1833,21 in which he has ever since resided, and that it is his intention to settle himself in this county and state. He further reports that in Poland he bore the Title and dignity of Major Baron and that it is his intention to renounce the same.
St. Louis, April 11, 1835. (Signed) Louis Chlopicki.
(From the Circuit Court records of St. Louis County, Mo.)
Arthur L. Waldo, a writer on Polish historical subjects who lives in Phoenix, Arizona,22 says that Ludwik, who used the Americanized word Louis in this country, spent eighteen or twenty years in St. Louis, and that there is some belief that he contracted an unhappy marriage there. He also says that the eminent Polish historian Haiman told him that the whirlwind courtship of a certain Miss Englemann was definitely by Major Ludwik Chlopicki, who overplayed his hand and did not get the charming German maiden. This story is told in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society: "Belleville Germans look at America," by Ada M. Klett, (March, 1947).
Numerous El Paso people of an early day have stated that Chlopicki came here from Peoria after the railroad was completed in 1856, but there is no record of any Peoria residence or property ownership, and no historical record can be found of his ever being in Peoria. Waldo is no doubt correct in stating Chlopicki lived in St. Louis during the missing years of 1835 through 1855. George Bestor no doubt knew him in St. Louis and brought him to Peoria to make the arrangement by which the Count came to El Paso to live in Bestor's house, run a restaurant for his living and possibly keep an eye on Gibson and Wathen's lot sales to make certain Mr. Bestor's railroad got its full and proper cut.
While agent for the exiles, he made a speech in Vandalia, Illinois in January, 1835, the only published words of his that we can find. An issue of the Sangamo Journal of late January quoted extracts of
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