Settled in 1662 as a fur-trading outpost, Schenectady remained a "sleepy little Dutch town" until the Erie Canal and the railroads infused commercial vitality. Glorying in the midst of its later development, however, Schenectady boosters condescendingly observed that in 1880, on the threshold of its greatest development, the city had scarcely reached a population of 15,000 people and its "chief boast to fame" was Union College. When Thomas Edison relocated his Edison Machine Works to Schenectady, a "golden era" began for what became known as the "Electric City."
Although both the Italian and Polish communities of Schenectady were products of the late-nineteenth-century industrial development of the city, Poles appeared as early as the late 1790s when several members of the well known Zabriskie family arrived from Albany. John Lansing Zabriskie was a member of the first graduating class of Schenectady's Union College in 1797 and was later ordained a Dutch Reformed minister. Another member of the family, Andrew Zabriskie, a merchant, was appointed police commissioner of the city.
Following the visit of the Polish aristocrat and former adjutant-general to Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, who stopped briefly in Schenectady during an extended tour of the United States, no Poles settled in the city permanently until the arrival in 1866 of Ludwig Gapczynski and his wife, Angela. Born in Prussian Poland, Gapczynski emigrated to the United States in 1855 and settled in New York City, where he resumed his trade as a tailor until 1864 when he enlisted in the Union army. A year after his discharge, Gapczynski arrived in Schenectady and opened a tailor shop on Veeder Avenue. Following a serious injury to his hands, which prevented him from continuing as a tailor, Gapczynski opened a grocery store on Ferry Street. Years later, when the Polish community began to develop, he became an immigrant "banker." Besides providing the Poles with regular banking services, he acted as an interpreter, bail bondsman, notary public and steamship agent. Considered the "father" of Schenectady's Poles, Gapczynski lived in the city until his death in 1904.
You're looking for a cache hidden near the Polish American Veterans club off Cutler St. in Schenectady.