The town was an important center of Polish Bar Confederates, and in the 1770s it was visited several times by Kazimierz Pułaski, one of the Confederates' military commanders and soon-to-be hero of the American Revolutionary War. In the late 18th century the town was held by the Polish noble Grotowski family. In 1812 Franciszek Grotowski founded an institute, which purpose was to take care of orphans and provide them with education, and a new orphanage was built in 1848. To this day the facade of the former orphanage is decorated with a relief of the Łodzia coat of arms of the Grotowski family. The town was a center of Polish resistance against Germanisation policies. 19th-century Polish publicist, activist and poet printed many of his works in the town. In the 19th century the county's population remained overwhelmingly Polish and Catholic by confession. In 1871 the town became part of Germany. The first railway reached it by 1884. The former castle of Lubliniec was converted into a hospital for the poor in 1893, then altered to a psychiatric hospital in 1895/96.