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At the end of the Nineteenth Century, many immigrants came to the shores of the United States looking for the opportunity to improve their lives. Some came because of religious or political persecution. The majority of the immigrants were people departing from their native land because of the economic reasons. Some of them were preceded by friends or their families. Immigrants from Polish lands left their families in rural areas to live in the industrialized locations, hoping that they would live better and help their families back in Poland. Those immigrants, entering United States through New York and intending to live in the East, settled in the region of the coal and steel mills of Pennsylvania and Appalachia, or worked in the New England in the woolen mills.
Polish immigrants in Rockville found work and lodging, but desired to retain their national and religious identity where they could worship God according to the national traditions and in the Polish language. It is significant that, before the first St. Joseph Church was built, there existed already religious organizations, e.g., the Rosary Society. The needs of Polish Catholics in Rockville were served by the priests who traveled to Rockville from New Britain or Hartford. To that end they desired to build their own church under direction of the Catholic Bishop of Hartford.
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