Francis and Mary Allen of Deerfield, Massachusetts, were out for a ride when they saw “some Polish women gathering onions.” The two sisters, early experts in artistic photography, decided to photograph the women and a child as they worked. One woman spoke enough English to understand what the sisters wanted to do. The Allens managed to get their photograph, although Mary wrote later in her diary that the two women worked so rapidly that she had to “shift the camera to follow, with varying success.”

The scene the Allen sisters captured on that fall day in 1912, recorded the presence in the Western Massachusetts Connecticut River Valley of a group of newcomers destined to alter permanently the cultural and economic identity of the region. Thousands of Eastern European immigrants settled in the region at the turn of the century. Some took jobs in factories in Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke, while others found work as agricultural laborers. The hard work and thrifty habits of some led to ownership of land that longtime “yankee” residents dismissed as worn out and useless. Those same acres yielded handsome profits to their new owners.

The author of of a 1903 New England Magazine article, “The Pole in the Land of the Puritan,” grudgingly applauded the Eastern European work ethic and frugality while condemning their language, Catholic religion, and culture. A novel published in 1913 focused on the immigrant experience of one community in the Connecticut River Valley. Its title captured the ambivalence and/or hostility with which White American-born residents viewed the most recent immigrants: The Invaders.