Adventures in Genealogy: Reunion

I've just returned from Lithuania, and it was an incredible trip. My Matulis relatives made a real fuss over me. I'm the first to make a trip over there other than my grandfather, and I got lots of questions along the lines of "why didn't you come sooner?!". I didn't have a good answer. Mainly it was because it always seemed too important to just make a quick trip and because I always imagined going with my cousins. I'm so glad I finally went though. Everybody was so incredibly welcoming. They gave me places to stay, took me around to see the sights, and drove me to the villages where my grandparents are from (as it turns out Tevuk is not from Pasvalys, but rather the countryside near Mitriuniai).

There's really far too much to write about the trip itself, and I couldn't possibly do justice to it in a description here. Instead, I'll stick mainly to things concerning genealogy. The Matulis family is HUGE. I mentioned previously that I wasn't certain the information my grandfather gave me was accurate. He had a foggy memory at the time and the way he relayed it to me was quite uncertain. I know now he was 100% correct, confirmed by living relatives in Lithuania. He had 5 brothers and a sister. Most of them had families, so that means there are just loads of Matuliai (that's the plural of Matulis) over in the father country.

Matulis family, circa 1940ish. Silvestras and Ona.
Children in order of age: Brone, Vacys, Petras, Vincas,
Adolis, Juozas, Valiukas

Mainly I stayed with Raimundas & Reda and Arunas & Loreta. I also relied on Elena for some much needed translation. Arunas and Raimundas are cousins of my father, and Elena is my second cousin.

Arunas & Loreta on the roof of the Prisikėlimo Bažnyčia church in Kaunas.

Eating blynai prepared by Loreta

Raimundas was very helpful in translating the inscriptions on the photos I received from Phyllis. There's some important information in them that I still haven't had time to fully investigate. Many of them are of the Kemešis family, especially photos sent from Veronika Kemešite to her sister (or half-sister) Peturnelia Kemešite / Žukauskiene in the United States, the grandmother of Phyllis. I'm eager to piece together that branch of the family. All the photos with translations are available here.

While visiting Juozas Matulis, a brother of my grandfather, in Pasvalys we looked through some more old photos. It was incredible to be able to recognize people from the photos I'd already seen (the ones from Phyllis mainly). They were impressed with how I recognized people I'd never actually met. I was also quite amused to find photos of myself in their albums!

Looking at photos - me, Juozas, Elena, Vygintas, Povilas, Loreta, Arunas.

Me and Lacy in their photo album.

Elena, Vygintas, Danute, Loreta, Juozas, Arunas, Jessee, me, Povilas, Ada.

Danute, me, Juozas

Ada, me (wearing Povilas' Soviet police uniform), Povilas

On the way to Pasvalys, Arunas showed me Počiuneliai, where the family church is located, and Mitriuniai which is the Soviet-era village that replaced the community where my grandfather was born (when the farms were collectivized, the residents were required to move to the new village there. In fact, my grandfather's brother Valiukas still lives there). This is important information for my genealogy research because the family records will be found mostly in the Počiuneliai books at the State Historical Archive in Vilnius. Some will also likely be found in the books for Krekenava, where there is a somewhat larger church that was just a couple kilometers more distant than the one in Počiuneliai.

Marriage of Ona and Silvestras, recorded at Krekenava.
It appears to say Ona Remešyte, but it's actually
Kemešyte. It's also the first I've seen of my 2x-great-
grandfather, Mykolas Matulis.

We stopped in Počiuneliai at the church, an old wooden building painted bright yellow, and visited the grave of my great-grandparents Ona and Silvestras. It was something to see the grave of my namesake. I was later shown a photo of my grandfather standing in the same place during his visit in 1992. Immediately behind their grave is an unmarked grave that is said to be that of my 2x-great-grandparents. Inside the church there was a mass in progress ("mass" being used generously as it consisted of about 10 or 12 people), but we stood briefly and had a look. Arunas explained that when my grandfather visited in 1992 he wasn't happy with the condition of the seats and made a donation to have the pews built. I believe they were actually made by someone in the Matulis family.

The church in Počiuneliai.

At the grave.

Tevuk in the same place in 1992.

2x-great-grandparents? Mykolas Matulis or
Konstantinas Kemešys?

Inside the church.

Along the way from my grandfather's old church to Mitriuniai we passed field after field. It is really farming country. I imagined my grandfather walking these same areas and even working in the fields. The potato harvest was actually taking place as we passed through and, it was explained to me, that it's still happening the way it did when my grandfather lived there. It's a family affair, apparently, and they all go out at once to dig the potatoes. One family was even still using a horse-drawn wagon!!

Family potato harvest.

There's a lot of history on this land.

Mitriuniai is just a few kilometers from Počiuneliai. It's not precisely where my grandfather is from, but the house where he was born no longer exists. Raimundas explained that when the Soviets collectivized the farms there they showed up and gave notice to the residents that they were building a home for them and that they should be ready to move in a year. This was after Tevuk had already left Lithuania. I expected that this was very traumatic for the rest of the family that remained, but Raimundas explained that it was more complicated than that. The new home was a solid and modern structure and, most of all, it had electricity and plumbing. Life on the collective farm, however, wasn't as easy as that might suggest. Valiukas, the youngest of the Matulis brothers who remained on the farm, is quite ill and frail from a tough life. His older brothers, Juozas and Adolis, who didn't work on farms, are doing considerably better.