Sunray

1. The marker text is based primarily on my (unfinished) translation of the 1934 Souvenir booklet for the 25th anniversary of Sunray, supplemented by additional research. 2. Sunray is not the first attempt at a Polish colony in Virginia. Two documents dating to 1867 indicate there was a Polish farming community attempted in Spotsylvania County shortly after the Civil War. The 1870 census has no one from Poland listed in the county, so the colony did not appear to survive. 3. A list of Polish Parishes in the US as of 1944 contains only one Virginia entry--“Blessed Virgin Mary” at Bowers Hill, the post office for St. Mary’s in Sunray. 4. I looked at many census records through www.familysearch.org. From 1800 to before 1900, Polish immigrants to Virginia generally had Jewish sounding surnames, lived in urban areas, and did not live in enclaves—their neighbors were primarily Virginians. When they were in rural areas, they typically were merchants or peddlars and again their neighbors were primarily Virginians. Between 1900 and 1940, the census records list people from Poland as predominantly farmers in the Deep Creek Magisterial District, which is the Sunray area, and others in urban areas—e.g., Richmond, Norfolk, Pocahontas, Danville, Roanoke. The immigrants in the latter three were probably involved with mining or manufacturing. I found no evidence of any other purely or predominately Polish communities, such as Sunray, in either period.