NEW YORK CATHOLIC WORKER RECORDS
STANLEY VISHNEWSKI PAPERS, 1933-1980

Biographical Note

Of Lithuanian extraction, Stanley Vishnewski was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 2, 1916. His birth name was Stanislaus Visniauskas.
(All members of his family used the last name of Vishnewski and had anglicized their first names by the time of the 1930 federal census.)
He joined the New York Catholic Worker community out of high school in 1934 and remained until his death from a heart attack on
November 14, 1979, with time away to serve in the Civilian Conservation Corps and a conscientious objectors camp, spend a year studying
at St. John’s University in Minnesota, explore a career as a freelance journalist, and briefly edit a diocesan newspaper in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Vishnewski returned to the CW for good in the early 1950s. He became the unofficial “guest master” at the community’s farms on Staten Island
and in Tivoli, New York, and achieved recognition as the Worker’s resident historian and archivist. In the last decade of his life, Vishnewski
completed his “personal history” of the movement during the 1930s and 1940s. His book, Wings of the Dawn, was published posthumously by the
New York Catholic Worker in 1984.


Scope and Content 

The Stanley Vishnewski Papers contain his private correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, and published articles. Notable correspondents
include Elizabeth Burrow, Dorothy Day, and Catherine de Hueck Doherty. Also worth noting are lengthy drafts of his "personal history" of the
Catholic Worker, and notes on his conversations with Dorothy Day for a projected biography..