Within a month, Mary had a job at a local factory, but she was disappointed because she found she was working as hard as before. After a series of better jobs, she found she would work less and earn more money. But because the factory where she worked would not employ married women, she lost her job a year later when she married her husband who was out of work at the time also. "So I look for work, he look for work," she remembered. "And I go to 2nd and Walnut, there was that…leather factory." She continues

The Barbiarz's worked hard and within a year took the unusual step of buying their own home on the east side of Wilmington, where in 1914 they became some of the first parishioners of St. Stanislaus church in the heart of a growing Polish community, numbering 8,000 by 1930. Although the immigrants came from many different parts of Poland, they shared similar traditions and developed a cultural identity that remains strong in Wilmington today.