From Thatched-Roof Houses to Immigrant Entrepreneurship: First Generation Lemko-American Businessmen in Bloomington, MN

The Lemko people are a numerically small population of highlanders who, for centuries, inhabited the northern slopes of their Carpathian Mountains in what is today the Polish borderland with Slovakia. In the late nineteenth century, they started arriving in the United States. With almost no resources and little education on their arrival, they were forced to accept hard and dangerous labor that most of them kept for their entire working lives. Some, however, opened small businesses. This book offers an overview of Lemko entrepreneurship during the early decades of immigration along with more than two hundred biographies of Lemko immigrant businessmen. It is richly illustrated with over three hundred historical advertisements, photos, documents, and maps.