The LAVA Center is excited to present “New Roots in River Banks: Polish and Other Eastern European Immigrants to Franklin County, 1880-1920,” a public talk delivered by Jeanne Sojka. Sojka is project manager of the Eastern European project and business manager at the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, and she is also Vice-President of the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts. She is also the curator of the “New Roots in River Banks” exhibit at LAVA this month and next.
Drawing on primary source documents, images and photos, newspaper articles, and family stories, Sojka will explore and illustrate the triumphs and tragedies of these immigrants and their experiences here, as well as of their descendants. She will focus especially on the agricultural history of Polish and other Eastern European farmers; their descendants are still very much part of the farming community of the Connecticut River Valley.
Sojka will be joined by Peter Thomas, who will be presenting a portion of his recorded oral histories and his slideshow of farmers and framing, including experiences by descendants of Polish and Ukranian immigrants. Listen to Walter Kownacki (1929-2023) late of Deerfield, as he shares his family’s farming experiences. His parents came from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. By 1915, over half of the children born in Deerfield were of immigrant parents, like Walter’s. Several of these Polish and Ukrainian families are the backbone of Deerfield’s farming community today.
Thomas’ oral history collection were recorded in 2023 as part of the Deerfield Oral History Project. He is a retired Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont and also worked for FEMA as an Environmental and Historic Preservation Officer. He is currently conducting research on the Connecticut River Valley, focusing specifically upon Deefield and the Indigenous communities in the valley.
This programming is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities, with funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
