Settlement Attracted Renowned Modjeska

Orange County’s first Polish-American settlement ended in failure, but it attracted Helena Modjeska, perhaps the county’s earliest international celebrity.

Shortly after the Germans settled Anaheim, a group of 12 or so Poles arrived in the same area with the thought of building an artists’ colony and farm, said Paul Apodaca, who heads the Bowers Museum’s Orange County history section.

“It was 1875, and the artists thought they would combine their artistic and farming talents, pursuing their art while depending on their farming for their livelihood,” Apodaca said.

Modjeska arrived in the county in 1876, Apodaca said, at the same time as Henryk Sienkiewicz, who wrote “Quo Vadis?” which depicted the early Christian struggle against the Romans.

Sienkiewicz later won a Nobel Prize for literature for “Tiology.”

Modjeska, who was born in 1840 and was already famous throughout Europe as a dramatic actress, quickly settled in. But the colony didn’t last.

“They were very good artists, but they were not very good farmers,” Apodaca said.

So Modjeska and her husband, Karol Chlapowski, the Count Bozenta, bought a house in the canyon that now bears her name. She called the area her Forest of Arden, after the setting of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” Apodaca said.

But to make ends meet, it was necessary for Modjeska to go back to work. There was just one problem, Apodaca said: Modjeska didn’t speak English.

“So she learned English in six weeks, went to San Francisco, gave her first English-language performance, which was widely hailed, and her second career was launched,” Apodaca said.

By the turn of the century, Modjeska had again settled in Orange County and was doing benefit performances for various local charities. In honor of these gestures, Modjeska Peak and Modjeska Canyon were named for her.

She died in 1909 in a house she owned in Newport Beach.