Congratulations to FHWS Board Member Anne Gurnack, a 2019 recipient of the Skalny Civic Achievement Award, a national award given by the Polish American Historical Association (PAHA)!

Since 1989, PAHA’s Skalny Civic Achievement Awards “honor individuals or groups who advance PAHA’s goals of promoting research on and awareness of the Polish experience in the Americas.” The awards are named after the Skalny family (Aniela, Anna, Ben, John and Joseph) that donated the funds to support this award.

Anne received the award in January for her contributions to the understanding of the “forgotten Poles” in New York City and Milwaukee. She has undertaken a number of efforts both to mobilize the Polish American community and to engage the Polish institutions to study, protect, and promote Kaszube heritage in Milwaukee. She has fostered cooperation between the Milwaukee Public Library and the Emigration Museum and contributed to the international cooperation between the Universities of Gdańsk and Wisconsin – Parkside.

As part of the annual meeting of the American Historical Associations in Chicago’s Chopin Theatre on January 3-6, Anne was presented with the Skalny award and also made a presentation there talking about the connections between the Kaszube settlements in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Canada, and the establishment of the earliest Catholic churches in the mid-1800’s.

To learn more about Milwaukee’s Jones Island settlement of Kaszube fishermen and how Anne’s research made it back to the Wejherowo Museum in Poland, click here for the story (and one of the FRIENDS’ most popular web posts!).