Rumia is a town in northern Poland, in the Wejherowo County in Pomeranian Voivodeship, with some 45,000 inhabitants. It is a part of the Kashubian Tricity and a suburb part of the metropolitan area of the Tricity. It is situated in Kashubia in the historic region of Pomerania. It is connected by well-developed railway and highway connections to the Tricity, an urban agglomeration of almost 1 million inhabitants on the coast of Gdańsk Bay.

Hieronim Derdowski, Kashubian-Polish intellectual and activist, was born to Kashubian parents in the Pomeranian village of Wiele. By the time Derdowski emigrated to the United States in 1885, he had already studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, been repeatedly incarcerated by the German authorities, and edited a newspaper in the city of Torun. At the time, however, Derdowski was better known as a poet. Within two years of reaching the United States he became editor of the Winona, Minnesota Polish-language newspaper Wiarus. In this role he gained a reputation as a strong voice for the Polish-American community, also known as Polonia.