Once again, we invite you to Nashua (in the state of New Hampshire), where St Stanislaus Church is located. In the not-so-distant past, this was the religious, cultural and social centre where the life of the thriving Polish community in this part of the New England region was centred for several decades.

Nashua, together with the town of Hollis to the west of it, was in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century an important centre of the paper and textile industry, based on the woollen raw material from the widely developed sheep farming here. The prosperous industrial plants employed workers increasingly coming from Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe. The lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were an inexhaustible source of labour. Their inhabitants, feeling the oppression of the partitioning powers and the economic misery, especially in the overpopulated countryside, set off for the New World in search, above all, of an improved material existence.

First Polish centres in Nashua
The first Polish settlers arrived in Nashua between 1854 and 1870 - among them were the Wrublewskis: John (1845-1915) and his wife Maryanna (as known from the cemetery inscription). The most numerous waves of emigration occurred between 1870 and 1910 and the inter-war years, despite the downturn during the Great Depression (1929-1933).

In their new place of settlement, in culturally foreign surroundings, Poles needed and sought an institutional social and religious life to nurture their national values. In March 1907, a secular Polish organisation named after John III Sobieski was established in Nashua. The following year (1908), the Catholic parish of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr (St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr) was established for Polish emigrants. Subsequently (1909), a parish church of the same name was erected in Nashua, and a little later a parish school and community meeting house was also built. Land was also purchased for the establishment of a Polish cemetery .

St Stanislaus Church
St Stanislaus Church is located in the city centre, surrounded by former industrial buildings. The site was purchased for a raised sum of $5,000 by the then parish priest, Rev Francis Taborski. The temple was erected in less than a year (1909). It was built of wood, and its white walls and tall massive tower topped with a cross, which is closely united to the body of the building and extends beyond its outline, are a distinctive accent of the neighbourhood. Arriving in Nashua in 1926, Father Joseph Piszczalka, who worked in the parish until 1948, electrified the church.

Architecture of St Stanislaus Church in Nashua
The walls of the church, with four pairs of tall, semicircular windows opposite them, carry the lofty, broken, gabled roof covered with asphalt shingles. Each roof slope consists of two parts - upper and lower - with a smaller angle of inclination than the former. A newer stone entrance portal with a raised terrace with stairs replaced the original wooden triangular columns set at pavement level.

The interior of the church consists of a nave with a barrel vault and side aisles separated from it by column supports. The whole is preceded by a small porch at the bottom of the tower and ends in a shallow, semicircular presbytery with a main altar. The main altar contains a neo-Gothic tabernacle with a statue of St Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr, accompanied by two kneeling angels.

The left and right aisles contain side altars with statues of the Madonna and Child and Joseph of Nazareth. Both, as well as the main altar, date from the 20th century. Above the entrance to the nave, across the width of the church, there is a music choir with an organ. A scene of the adoration of the Virgin and Child is painted on the chancel wall. The ceiling of the nave, on the other hand, features biblical scenes set in geometric ornamentation; the vaults of the two side aisles also have this.

Furnishings of the Polish church in Nashua
Twelve stained-glass windows made of multi-coloured glass are extremely valuable furnishings of the St Stanislaus Church in Nashua. They fill the window openings of the side aisles (8) and the façade (4). They depict not only figures of saints (they are: St. Jude Thaddeus the Apostle, St. Peter the Apostle, Christus Petra Mea, St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, St. Anne Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary), but also the crowned Mother of God, Christ in the crown of thorns, motifs of the Burning Heart of Jesus, the American and Polish flags and an eagle. The inscriptions in Polish and the Polish names at the bottom of the stained glass windows indicate who founded them.

There are also two interesting older objects in the church. Placed on a column in the nave is a wooden cross with a statue of the Crucified Christ, while in a separate room to the left of the entrance is a processional pennant, exposed with a side depicting the image of St Anne with a prayer book in her hand and accompanying her praying daughter, the Blessed Virgin Mary. A powdery prayer invocation in French (BONNE-SAINTE-ANNE PRIEZ-POUR-NOUS) is visible. The whole is framed by subtle embroidered floral ornamentation with a grapevine motif.

Also of interesting form and decoration is the newer wooden pulpit (replacing the original one), which stands at the edge of the nave by the chancel.

The subsequent fate of St Stanislaus Church in Nashua
In 1933, the Society of St Joseph was established in Nashua. An important anniversary for the Polish parish in Nashua was its 50th anniversary celebrated in 1958. A publication published for the occasion (50 years at St. Stanislaus, 1908-1958, Goulet Printing Co., Nashua, 1958) contains the detailed information on the life of the Polish parish used in this text.

After 1945, as Poland fell into dependence on the Soviet Union, as well as following economic changes in the New England region, new immigrants from Poland stopped arriving here. In the decades that followed, the old Polish community dwindled due to natural causes, and its younger representatives often left Nashua. The former activity of the St Stanislaus parish weakened significantly. Therefore, with the influx of Latin American migrants to the city and the region, it merged in 2002 with the Spanish-speaking parish of St. Aloysius of Gonzaga (St. Aloysius Gonzaga), which also took over the archives of the Polish parish. In 2016, on the other hand, St Stanislaus Parish was taken over by the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St Peter for the celebration of the liturgy in the classical Roman rite.