Polish immigrants Jan Lesinski and his wife Weronika (Rusin) settled in Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1909 and worked in the textile mills there for decades. Married in 1922, the couple raised a son and daughter in their home on Franklin Street. Weronika Lesinski died in Northampton in 1961, her husband following twelve years later.
The Lesinski and Rusin family collection reflect the lives of an average working-class Polish family from Easthampton, Mass., during the early twentieth century. Numerous family photographs document important occasions for the families, such as baptisms, first communions, and weddings, and the photographic postcards and commercial postcards document their relationships, interests, and travel.
Born in Jednorozec, Poland, on June 21, 1887, the son of Franciszka and Maryan Lesinski, Jan Lesinski emigrated to the United States in April 1909. After a short stay in Northampton, he relocated southward to the New City district of Easthampton and then to the adjacent mill district south of the Lower Mill Pond, working in the city's textile mills as a weaver or braider and spending many years at United Elastic.
In 1922, Lesinski married Weronika Rusin (1889-1961), the daughter of Ignacy and Anna (Winiarz) Rusin from Tuszyma, a village that was then part of Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Like Jan, Weronika arrived in Easthampton in 1909, although an older sister, Apolonia, had emigrated there three years previously and was already working as an operative in the mills. Apolonia married a textile weaver, Joseph Szewczyk, in 1911, raising a large family.
By the end of the 1920s, Jan and Weronika were living at 45 Franklin Street in the heart of one of Easthampton's Polish American neighborhoods, situated directly across the street from the school for Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish. They occasionally Americanized their names to John and Veronica; Apolonia appears to have gone by the name Victoria. Weronika Lesinski died in Northampton in 1961, aged 71; John died in Williamsburg in November 1973.
Scope of collection
The Lesinski and Rusin family collection reflects the lives of an average working-class Polish family from Easthampton, Mass., during the early twentieth century. Although primarily studio portraits, the photographs document important moments in the lives of the Lesinski and Rusin families, from first communions to weddings, and the photographic and commercial postcards document their relationships, interests, and travel. The collection also includes a handful of Polish-language publications, including a Polish-English dictionary, arithmetic book, child's reader, and a copy of the Constitution of the St. Kazimierz benevolent society in Turners Falls.
Most of the postcards in the collection were addressed to Weronika Rusin prior to her marriage, with only a handful from later years. Weronika's most frequent correspondents included her sister Sophie (also spelled Zofia and Sofie) -- who did not emigrate and who wrote both in Polish and German from Bucharest, Krakow, Tarnow, and other locations -- and a friend Ignacy Skarpetowski, who served in Maine in the Coast Artillery Corps during the First World War.
