Maple Grove Township, Shawano County, Wisconsin in 1898

Maple Grove Township is in eastern Shawano County in Wisconsin. It is close to Pulaski, Wisconsin and the nearest big city is Green Bay. John J Hoff was a land developer in the Green Bay area in the late 1880s. What had been timbered land was offered to settlers to be farmed. Apparently, he had not been particularly successful promoting his holdings to his Norwegian brethen and turned his marketing to Polish immigrants. His first venture was land near the community of Hofa Park in Maple Grove Township. He also established the Polish communities of Pulaski, Sobieski, Kosciuszko, and Krakow nearby. Hofa Park is named after John J Hoff. He had a summer residence there and its setting was like a park so the Poles called it Hofa Park. A plat book from 1898 lists land owners and a plat map shows where their holdings were located. The problem is it was prepared by someone not familiar with Polish so many of the names are poorly spelled and nearly unrecognizable. Fortunately, the 1900 US Federal Census of Maple Grove Township was recorded by a Pole. This meant that the correct names of many of the Polish land owners in the plat book were found (but not all). In a few cases, I expanded an abbreviated given name if provided in the census. One needs to understand that not everyone in the census was a land owner-- many rented. And just because someone owned land did not mean that they lived on the land they owned and therefore were absent from the census. I made some best "guesses" based on my experience with Polish names and how they sound. The owners list with the original plat map was by parcel number. The table below is in alphabetical order. Surnames in parentheses are from the plat listing but the main entry is the 'correct' name from the census. More history of the area is given in the Hofa Park parish church of St. Stanislaus jubilee book from 1958.