In 1913 in Austria/Poland, at the age of 28, Andrzej O. received a letter from his favorite younger brother Joseph. Joseph had gone to America several years earlier, and he was now urging Andrzej to come join him in the land of opportunity.
Encouraged, Andrzej bought himself a ticket on a passenger steamship and boarded in Hamburg, Germany, carrying with him the princely sum of $35 for starting his new life. After crossing the ocean, he disembarked in Pennsylvania, along with other European immigrants. He eventually made his way to Chicago, where he began work as a carpenter, building new apartment buildings near the Bridgeport area of the rapidly expanding city.
Andrzej quickly taught himself to read and write English, first using newspaper comics as his textbooks. After several years, he met and married an American girl whose family had originated near his old hometown in Poland, and he also became an American citizen. He and his wife worked hard and bought and sold a series of buildings over the years: an apartment, a store, another apartment, and finally a building with a store and seven apartments in the Wicker Park neighborhood. Andrzej continued to work as a carpenter and contractor, and his wife ran the store.
But Andrzej longed for the open fields and flowers and skies of his youth. When close friends of his moved to a small farmette in DuPage County, Andrzej and his wife quickly bought the property next door, planning to establish a self-sufficient farmette of their own.
The rural area was mostly vacant: endless expanses of tall grasses, wildflower meadows, cultivated wheat and hayfields, some small marshes and tree groves, a trickle of springs. In order to be able to find the entrance to the property among all the natural abundance, Andrzej planted five silver maples in a small copse together next to the property entrance. He called the property "Five Trees".
Sadly, Andrzej's wife passed away from a stroke before they could see their dream fulfilled, and Andrzej, brokenhearted, remained in Chicago until his own passing. Before he passed away, though, he helped build a new house on the property for his daughter and son-in-law. They lived there for years until their own passing, when the property was inherited by their daughter. She lived there with her own family for many years until the property was passed down to her son and his family.
During the last fifty years, the little farm was run as a horse boarding stable and was also used to raise goats, sheep, and chickens. As the area gradually built up and livestock was discouraged, the animals were replaced with hay and small crops. Eventually, it was decided to raise bees.
And so Andrzej's legacy still lives on, in the fields where he first planted five silver maples together so he could find the entrance.
Postscript: one of the five trees was snapped during the 2026 storms, and the rest were subsequently topped off to prevent possible damage to vehicles or pedestrians. Only the stumps remain, still at the foot of the original house driveway.
