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| Chute |
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| Me and Chute |
Most recently, when I was accepted to study for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, I learned that her side of the family had lived for a time in Scotland. I knew I had a "wee bit" of Scottish ancestry (McPherson) from the other side of my family, but I had no idea that the Lithuanian branch had been there too! In fact, Chute's mother was born there! That's just one example of major details that can be lost only a couple generations down the line. As it turned out, when my grandparents came to the United States post-WWII, it wasn't the first time the family had fled turmoil in Lithuania. Around the turn of the century, they had escaped persecution by the Russian Czar and sought refuge in Glasgow, Scotland. My great-grandmother, who we've always referred to as chute-chute, was born there. She grew up in Glasgow, married a Lithuanian immigrant, had their first child there, and eventually moved back to Lithuania, where Chute was born! When Lithuania regained independence in 1918, they must have seen it as an opportunity to go home. It amazes me that I may have never known about this, especially since, as I will explain below, some of that Lithuanian lineage still lives in Scotland today! Others in the family knew that we had been there because chute-chute, I'm told, even into her late years, spoke with a Scottish accent. Unfortunately, she died before my memories. None of us has ever had contact with the family that is still there, and they almost certainly don't know we exist.
...photo of chute-chute and me as infant coming...
When I arrived in Edinburgh (September 2010), it was high on my list to find some record of the family that had been there. Of course spare time for such pursuits is not abundant when starting a PhD, so it's been slow moving. Last December I paid a visit to the Family History Centre at the Scottish Genealogy Society on Victoria Terrace and did the "taster session" at the General Register House on Princes Street where all Scottish birth, marriage, death, and census records are kept. The people at the Genealogy Society were friendly and got me acquainted with how to search the record systems and provided some useful tips. Their mostly oriented towards records pre-dating 1855, but they have public computers with access to ancestry.co.uk, findmypast.com, and a good library. The taster session at the Register House is free for two hours and then is bloody robbery (£15/day!) after that. That's actually part of the reason it took me so long to go back there. When things fall into place and you start finding what you want, though, it's totally worth the money.
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| General Register House |
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| King George III This statue is in the Register House. George III was the reigning monarch during the American Revolution. History remembers him differently over here. |
On my first visit I spent most of my time just trying to locate the first record I could confirm was actually our family. Fortunately, this was made somewhat easier by the unusual names I was searching for. Chute's maiden name was Kisielius. While matters are simplified by the rarity of the name, they are complicated by spelling variations and other miscommunications that certainly arose due to language and accent difficulties (I can't even understand the Glaswegian accent and I'm a native English speaker!). Chute also told me that her mother, Sophie, had been a Raulinitis before marriage, although she didn't seem entirely certain. Both her father and her brother had been called Kazimiras, and at least the younger had been born in Scotland just a few years before she was born in Lithuania – the family must have re-emigrated between 1918 and 1921.
The only record that I found on this first visit that I was certain was my family has turned out to be the most useful one of all. It was the marriage record between chute-chute and Kazimiras, on 1 September 1917. First it shows that she was actually called Zose, not "Sophie" as Chute remembers and as she was probably known as a girl in Glasgow (Sophie is a very common Scottish name). She was just 17 when they married, and Kazimiras was significantly older, 26. Next, it lists all of the parents of the couple (my great-great-grandparents), including the maiden names of the mothers (my great-great-great-grandmothers' surnames!). Zose (chute-chute) was the daughter of Matthew and Eva Raulinitis, and Eva's maiden name was Grivaciute (giving us Grivacius in the Lithuanian naming system). She's listed as Gurevicjute elsewhere. Kazimiras was the son of Michael and Catherine Kisielius. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make out the maiden name because of hand writing – something like Arm???cute. Despite the Anglophone names, "Michael" and "Catherine", I think they were never in Scotland and that the record taker just took them down that way. "Matthew" Raulinitis gets listed as "Motiejus" and sometimes "Matas" elsewhere, so clearly some liberty was being taken here.
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| Kisielius / Raulinitis marriage record (1917) |
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| Last name of my great-great-great-grandparents. Can you read what it says? |
The other information listed isn't all that useful for tracing lineage, but it humanizes them a little. Witnesses listed are Anthony Shraeistris, Antanas Sidarankas, and Bladas Sidarauskas, probably family friends and part of what was almost certainly a tight knit community of immigrants in a foreign land. It shows that Kazimiras was a coal miner (common among the Eastern European immigrants), which was a harsh and extremely dangerous job back then. Zose was a "munitions shell filler" – she was making bullets and bombs for World Was I! Motiejus Raulinitis was also a coal miner, but Michael Kisielius is listed as a farmer. I take this as further evidence that Kazimiras's parents never came to Scotland – access to land was uncommon for immigrants and he almost certainly would have ended up as a coal miner too if he were there. They were married at St Luke's Church in Glasgow, a Catholic church. It also indicates that the government record I was consulting was produced “after publication” of records from the church (I'd intend to visit the church and see if I can find the original). The last piece of information that is given is the address of their "usual residences", one of which came in handy in confirming an earlier census record. Zose lived at 178 Rose Street, and Kazimiras lived at 69 Adelphi Street, both in Glasgow, neither of which appear to exist today (apparently we lived in the slums that were demolished during urban redevelopment). I visited Rose Street last Spring and found that the M8 now passes over where the Raulinitis's home would have been.*
Later I found a census record for the Raulinitis family, and it shows that they had been living at 178 Rose Street at least since 1911. And the 1918 birth record for Kazimiras Jr. (Chute's older brother) shows that they were living there after the marriage. It's not clear if Motiejus and Eva moved elsewhere or if they all lived together (the 1921 census won't be available until 2021). Before 1921, though, Kazimiras, Zose, and Kazimiras Jr. had left for Lithuania because Chute was born there in that year (I did double check, though, and made sure there was no birth record for Chute in Scotland!).
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| Kazimiras Jr's birth record. |
Lithuania regained independence from Russia (and from Germany) in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I. Despite having never been there herself, Zose packed up and went with Kazimiras back to Lithuania at about the age of 20 (Kazimiras was about 30). This is another reason I suspect that Kazimiras himself had immigrated, without his parents – he must have known Lithuania and wanted to go back. Zose was born in Scotland, though, and Lithuania would have seemed as foreign to her as it does to me (familiar in a sense, but unknown and distant). If only there were a way to know the mixed emotions she would have been experiencing during that time.
Chute and her younger sister "Kitty", then, were born in Lithuania and grew up there with their brother Kazimiras Jr. Chute has told me that because Kazimiras Jr. was born in Scotland, he had the option to join the British military in the lead up to World War II, but that he chose instead to join the newly re-formed Lithuanian military – a bad decision in hindsight. Shortly after joining (late 1930s?), the soldiers were abducted by the Russians and shipped off to Siberia. Russia feared Nazi aggression and pre-emptively re-took control of the Baltic countries so they could (and did) serve as a buffer from Nazi attack. Chute got one letter and picture from her brother while at the labor camps, and then they never heard from him again. He's almost certainly in a mass grave somewhere.
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| Kazimiras Jr. in his Lithuanian military uniform. |
The marriage record of my great-grandparents confirmed that two branches of the family, Raulinitis and Kisielius, were indeed in Scotland around the turn of the century. But they were the ones that I knew had left. It didn't help to locate any family that may have remained and may still be living there. It took me nearly a year to make time to get back to the Register House and resume the search.
My second visit, just last Wednesday, began slow but ended in great success. I started with the Kisielius side because that was the name carried by Chute before marriage. Several Kisielius records showed up, but I haven't been able (yet) to connect them to Kazimiras (my great-grandfather). There's a possibility they were his siblings or cousins that carried the same name, but I didn't find anything to connect them through Michael and Catherine (the parents of Kazimiras, my great-great-grandparents). Kazimiras himself shows up in the record for the first time in 1917 when he married chute-chute. But I suspect he had been here quite a bit longer. He's not on the 1901 or 1911 census, but spelling was a problem and immigrants often get missed. There's no birth record for him either, so he was probably an immigrant himself. I suspect he came alone as a young man, without his parents.
The Raulinitis's were equally as hard to track until I worked out the butchered spelling. The marriage record identified my great-great-grandparents, Motiejus ("Matthew") and Eva Raulinitis. Using that I was able to identify the siblings of chute-chute (Chute's aunts and uncle, my great-great-aunts and uncle). They had 4 children that survived (a fifth is listed as deceased on the 1911 census): Zose, Annie, Peter, and Margaret. Birth records also showed that Motiejus and Eva had immigrated together – they're listed as married on 26 February 1900 in "Wilna, Russia" (that's the German name for Vilnius, and Russia was the occupying power at the time). I suspect they arrived just after being married. They don't appear on the 1901 census (or I couldn't find them because of mis-spelling), but they turn up on the 1911 census as "Rolwich"! I'm sure language and accent was a problem on the census and Motiejus, at least, was illiterate (he signs with an "X"!). I was only able to determine they had become Rolwich (also sometimes listed as "Rowland") from an address match (178 Rose St) and age matches. On the same census chute-chute gets listed as "Jessie", so they obviously had communication problems with the census taker. There's a large age gap between Zose and her younger siblings, 8 years from her to the second born, Annie. When she made the move back to Lithuania, the others would have still been a little young to go along.
Annie Raulinitis (Chute's aunt, born 8 Feb 1910) doesn't appear much in the record. I couldn't find marriage or death records, so the trail basically stopped with her. I suspect she ended up with a different name, possibly "Rowland", and then married and got another name. It is possible, though, that she emigrated as well. Eventually, I'll look into her more.
Peter Raulinitis (Chute's uncle, born 2 Feb 1912, died 1979) becomes Peter Rolwich and keeps that name his whole life. "Rolwich" appeared to be a census taker's mistake in 1911, but it stuck. It stuck with him, and not Motiejus, Eva, Annie, or Margaret. I'm not sure why. Eastern European sounding names were (maybe still are) a real disadvantage in Britain. I read that Lithuanian immigrants to Britain were treated very poorly and were often cheated out of wages. They also tended to refer to all Eastern Europeans uniformly as "Poles", as if our cultural identities were indistinct and unimportant. That could be part of the reason why the "Anglacized" names stuck. All the Raulinitis siblings would have spoken with Scottish accents, so having an inconspicuous name would have spared them a great deal of discrimination. Fortunately, Rolwich is also a really uncommon name (the mis-spelling of an already uncommon name), so we're possibly the only family in Scotland that has it. And since Peter is male, it gets passed on. That makes finding them really easy. I was actually able to trace all the way through to living Scottish relatives!! Peter married Jessie Doyle on 6 Sept 1935, and they had two kids Peter Rolwich Jr. (1936) and Eric Hugh Rolwich (1942). Peter Jr. married Ellen Trainer MacDonald, and they had 4 kids: Brian Rolwich (1962), Peter Francis Rolwich (1964), Catherine Rolwich (1960), and Martin Joseph Rolwich (1969). Eric Hugh Rolwich married Anne Dwyer, and they had two kids: Annette Rolwich (1966) and Colin Ian Rolwich (1971). I was able to trace them right up to the present (the most recent was born in 2002!), but I'll leave them off of here for now. It's really quite exciting to have tracked down living relatives! They all appear to still live in the Glasgow area. I plan to contact them when I get back (unfortunately that's not until March).
Margaret Raulinitis (Chute's youngest aunt, 1913-1969) is easy to track through one generation, but things get tricky after that. She married Anthony Flanagan on 15 July 1931. A good Irish name like that is everywhere over here, so quite a bit of filtering is required to figure out who is who. The records for matrilineal grandaughters will lose any trace of "Raulinitis" if they can't be connected through male siblings. I imagine the Rolwich's know them, though, so even if I can't track the records, I should be able to fill in the holes. Margaret and Anthony had five kids: Annie Flanagan (1932), Joseph Flanagan (1937), Mary Flanagan (1940), Margaret Flanagan (1942), and Rose Flanagan (1949). There are no death records for Annie, Joseph, or Mary. But I ran out of time to check the others or to attempt searching for marriages or children.
There are a handful of other Raulinitis and Kisielius listings (with various spellings), but I haven't been able to connect them to us yet. If, for example, siblings or cousins came over with Kazimiras Sr, Motiejus, or Eva that could connect us to the others that are here. But finding something that lists foreign parents will be tough.
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* UPDATE: further digging has shown that the Rose St that the Raulinitis's lived on was renamed Florence St and wasn't the Rose St I visited. Nonetheless, it appears their building no longer stands.
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