Antoni Wysocki was born in 1868 in Planta, Suvalkai, Vilkaviskis, Lithuania which was controlled by the Russian Empire. He emigrated to the United States in 1887 and worked for some years as a farm laborer in Sunderland and South Deerfield, Massachusetts, before establishing his own onion farm and warehouse. It was located on the southern edge of River Road, about a mile from South Deerfield center. In 1897, he married Jenni (Genowefa) Mokrzecki, (1880-1921) in Holyoke, MA. She immigrated from Lithuania in 1893, with her father. The Wysocki’s son, Alexander, was born in 1899; they had five more children: Helen, Antony, Edward, Charles, and Frank. Wysocki was very enterprising; he first purchased 13 acres of land in South Deerfield in 1899 for $850. By 1904 the assessed value of his Deerfield properties was $3,220. Later in 1909, he established a grocery store on 4th Street in Turners Falls, Massachusetts; it became the Polish Co-operative Store and was incorporated in 1927. Wysocki died in 1926.
This photograph comes from the Howes Brothers collection. They were based in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and made more than 20,000 images of New England rural life from 1890 to around 1910.
