Kalikst Wolski

Origin

Poland

Sources

Wolski

Notes

b. 1816, d. 22 Jan 1885 (pl.wikipedia); a Polish forty-eighter from France who sailed New York to New Orleans in Nov 1854 and reached Reunion with Cousin's party on 3 May 1855; the colony's interpreter and its agent in Dallas; left about 15 Nov 1855; author of Do Ameryki i w Ameryce (Lwow 1876), chs XXI-XXVI on the colony (src/sources/wolski). On no list and no manifest — he came from New York

Biography

Kalikst Wolski


Name
  Canonical: Kalikst Wolski
  Also: Calixte Wolski (French usage); "the Pole" of the other witnesses

Birth: 1816, Poland
Death: January 22, 1885 (Polish Wikipedia; place not given)
Burial: unknown

Origin: a Polish émigré of the 1848 generation, living in France, where he
  took part in the 1848 revolution and met the Fourierists; spoke English,
  which no one else in the first party did.

Occupation at colony: interpreter, and the colony's agent in Dallas — riding
  in daily on its business (land, the merchant "Gold," the meat market)
Occupation in Dallas: none; he left before the colony's Dallas phase

Ship / arrival: from New York, not Europe — sailed New York to New Orleans on
  Capt. Klark's ship on November 1, 1854, and reached Réunion with Cousin's
  party on May 3, 1855, after a 32-day march from Houston: one house ready,
  a second begun, a separate kitchen. He is on none of the four Atlantic
  rosters and on no later list.

Colony role: the interpreter's window on both sides of the river. His diary
  gives the founding party's arrival, Considérant's (June 15–17), Savardan's
  (July 17, correcting Savardan's own June 16), the ~130 peak of August, the
  sickness (Vezian and Ruppert dead, "6 dead in 15 days"), the weekly labor
  exchange, the Maget faction, the first reimbursement in kind (Leguay,
  November 1), and Considérant's 25-cents-an-acre relocation plan.

Post-colony
  - Left about November 15, 1855, as the colony broke up; "one of the
    chroniclers of the American West" in the 1860s (Polish Wikipedia)
  - Do Ameryki i w Ameryce (Lwów, 1876): the Réunion chapters are XXI and
    XXIII–XXVI, chapters XXIV and XXVI dated journal entries. Transcribed and
    translated in doc/text/books/1800/wolski/reunion_excerpt/; Coleman's
    English excerpt is new_light.pdf.

Sources
  Wolski, Do Ameryki i w Ameryce (1876), chs XXI, XXIII–XXVI
  src/sources/wolski/dossier.md and timeline.md
  pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalikst_Wolski (dates)

Notes
  The colony's least interested eyewitness: not management, not a
  shareholder, not a faction, and generous to Considérant — which is why his
  dates are the ones the timeline follows where the French witnesses diverge.
  He names the first party's companions the lists never caught: Bussy the
  ex-sub-prefect of Avranches, Vézian the ex-lieutenant from Algiers, the
  tailor Maget out of Icaria, Leguay the Belgian shareholder.

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