Pamiętnik handlowca

It was claimed to be the only extant primary source from the Jamestown Colony that provides the perspective of Polish artisans who had been brought in by Captain John Smith in 1608.

[1] The Memoir is said to have surfaced in Chicago, Illinois, in 1947, when a person offered to sell it to Mieczysław Haiman, the director of the Polish Museum of America.

[1] The book was popularized through the writings of the journalist and ethnographer Arthur Waldo, who claimed to have seen it and to have made a partial copy for his records, but more recently, researchers have questioned the authenticity of the source, which cannot be located in any museum, library, or collection.

James S. Pula in 2008 concluded, "Given all of the vain attempts to locate so much as a single reference to the Pamietnik, let alone an extant copy, it would appear that, unless some independent verification surfaces, Stefański's memoir must be rejected as a legitimate source.

The Poles are known, from primary English sources, to have been hired as skilled artisans, but in Stefański's memoir the six men were to have been presented as merchants or at least as trading officials in Poland.