Kisielius Siblings

Among the many Kisielius records that I frantically downloaded before close-of-business on my last visit to the archive was one for Marrie Valaitis, maiden name Kisieliute (family name Kisielius, using the Lithuanian naming conventions).

Death:  Marrie Valaitis (Kisieliute), 1975

This one caught my attention because "Valaitis" was one of the names mentioned by my Uncle Jimmy (actually my great-uncle-in-law) when I was home last December.  He explained that Kazimiras Sr, my great-grandfather, wasn't the only one of the Kisielius' to emigrate to Scotland.  He had 5 brothers who went with him (Andrew, John, ???, ???, ???) and a sister who they saved money to bring over later.  He told me she married and took the name Valaitis.  I'm quite certain the record above is her!

Kazimiras and Zose's marriage record reports "Michael" Kisielius and "Catherine" Arn???iute as his parents.  I had already suspected those were just Anglicized versions of their Lithuanian names because Motiejus Raulinitis came up as "Matthew" on the same record.  Marrie's death record confirms it, listing them as Mykolas and Katarina.

Marriage:  Kazimiras and Zose, 1917

It's a pretty exciting find because now it is quite likely that I'll find relatives from Kisielius branch living here as well.  More to come as I sort through these records further.

[UPDATE:  The rest of the records didn't contain any other Kisielius's that I think I'm related to.  That's a disappointment, but it makes sense.  They would have all been in the age range that would have been affected by the Anglo-Russian Military Convention, just as Kazimiras Sr was.  I'm pretty sure some of them ended up in the United States, in the coal mining region of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in order to avoid military conscription (if the living memories are correct).  I just didn't know if some stayed behind.  Apart from Marrie Valaitis, it doesn't appear that they did.  So far, though, I've only searched the death records.  There's a chance that I might still get lucky and find some marriage records to help track them down in the US.]

Lithuanians in Scotland

Here's an interesting BBC radio story about a Lithuanian immigrant to Scotland:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mr0rj.  The program starts about 1 minute in and is about 6 minutes long.

It mentions some interesting points that might be useful to me.  First, they entered at the port of Leith from Hamburg, Germany.  Surely, many different routes would have been used, but Leith is the logical port for coming from the Baltic.  I suspected this would have been where my ancestors entered, and while this doesn't confirm that they did, it's good to know that it's a likely possibility.

It also says that all immigrants had to report to Customs and Excise.  This is good news because it suggests that there should be a record of their entry.  If I can find that, hopefully it will answer the question of whether or not Zose and Jessie are the same person.

There is also a funny commentary about how the immigration officers changed the names of the immigrants.  Fortunately, my relatives appear to have gotten through with their names intact, making my job today considerably easier.

Crossing the Pond

In my first post about the McPherson branch, I explained that I had traced back several generations to find the ones who had first come to the US from Scotland:  John P and Mary McPherson, with children James F and Mary.  Since these are such common names, though, I expected I'd need to know more to find the correct records of them over here, specifically what town they came from.

Since I was at the archive looking into my Lithuanian-Scottish roots already, though, I thought I'd just have a quick look.  My suspicion was right.  A search of the 1851 census for "John McPherson" born between 1819 and 1821 must have returned something like 100 results!  Many of them were married to women named Mary.  There just isn't enough information on the census to be sure any of them was the right one.  Unfortunately James and Mary were born just after that census, or else I might have been able to narrow things down with the 4 of them listed.

One advantage I had, however, was that I knew they were Catholic.  Before 1855, the government wasn't the one that kept the records, the church did.  Two (or more?) independent sets of records were kept for Protestants and Catholics.  This meant I could rule out quite a few possibilities by searching exclusively in the Catholic registers.  The Catholic Church kept records of Baptisms, Banns, and Burials, roughly equivalent to the present day records of Births, Marriages, and Deaths.

Since I didn't know when exactly they had married, I searched first for a record of a James born to a John and Mary in 1851.  To my surprise, not many actually came up (maybe it was even just one)!

Birth:  James McPherson, 1851

I did the same for Mary born in 1853, and found a match!  The two records show that (mother) Mary's maiden name was Johnston on both, and that they were in St. Mirin's parish (it is called a "parish", right?) in Paisley, just west of Glasgow south of the Clyde.  Given how common these names were, I have to treat all of this with uncertainty, but it's hard to have a better match:  four correct names and two correct dates.

Birth:  Mary McPherson, 1853

Now that I was confident they were right ones, I searched for a marriage record using the maiden name "Johnston" and the location of Paisley.  And got a match!  It was earlier than I would have expected, in 1847, but infant mortality was high in those days.

Marriage:  John McPherson and Mary Johnston, 1847

I'm not sure why I didn't, at that point, go back and look for a census record, but I guess I was too excited about what I had found.  Eventually, I'll go back.  In the meantime, it would be nice to find some other evidence to corroborate what I've found (eg. a US death record for Mary would show her maiden name).

John and Jessie

A couple weeks ago, I explained my theory about John Raulinatis.  Yesterday, I tried to find some evidence to confirm it.  No such luck.  I found his birth record, but it doesn't provide any new information.

Birth:  John Raulinatis

The only other Jessie that comes up is the Jessie that married Peter, Jessie Doyle.  I thought I had found something for a moment since her death record reports her married name, Jessie Rolwich, but it's clear they're different people because of the parents listed.

Death:  Jessie Rolwich

The lack of any further record of Jessie Raulinatis leaves the possibility open that my theory might be correct - she may well be Zose Raulinitis.  But I can't be sure.  Another possibility is that they are sisters.  The census record indicates that Eva and Matthew had 3 children, but that only 2 were still living.  If the question was misunderstood, they may have reported that they had 3 children, but that only 2 were living with them. Maybe Zose was somewhere else at the time.  The only way to answer this might be to find their arrival record.  If both children are listed, then we know they're different people.  If not, then the theory may still hold.

The Flanagans

On my previous archive visit, when I first identified the Rolwichs, I found that Margaret Raulinitis had married a Flanagan and had several children.  I ran out of time, though, before I could take it any farther than that.  Filtering through a common name like Flanagan is considerably more difficult.  This time around, I planned to take it one generation further.

The Flanagan Branch

It was actually easier than I had expected.  I just searched for marriage records, and then used the information on them to find their children.  Since the bride and groom's parents appear on marriage records, it's easy to confirm when you've got a match.  I was able to add another 14 people to tree!  And I didn't even turn up anything for 2 of the 5 Flanagan children.  There were no death records for them, though, so my guess is that I just missed them.  But since I've got 11 to locate in the generation between about 1960 and 1980 already, I thought I'd just leave it for now.  The way things are shaping up, I could have dozens of living Scottish relatives!

Eric Rolwich

When I met Brian, Therese, Martin, and Paul at Easter they told me that it had been years since they had had any contact with their cousins or uncle Eric Rolwich.  The best they knew, Annette has passed away a few years back.

Rolwich Tree

I had been hoping that they'd be able to help me make the contact since locating anybody has proven difficult.  Unfortunately, they couldn't.  We all agreed to do some more searching.  For my part, I did some googling, facebooking, and phonebook searching, but came up empty handed.  So yesterday I decided to search at the archive for records to confirm that the others were still living.

Thankfully, it appears that they are.  I couldn't find death records for Eric, Anne, Colin, or Annette's widower Gerald.  Annette did, in fact, pass away in 2004.  I also searched a second time to see if Colin had married or had children.  To the best I can tell, he didn't.  I also couldn't find any record of Gerald re-marrying.  That means the four of them should still be around.  I'm at a bit of a loss about how to locate them, but at least we know they're out there.

Archive Visit

I took another trip to the Scotland's People archive yesterday.  This time I went in prepared (because it's so dang expensive!).  And it paid off.  For 7 hours straight, I was finding new records to expand the tree.  They had to ask me to leave at closing time!  By the end I was just downloading records of people that might be related, so I could review them later.

I've got updates to post about the Flanagan branch of the Raulinitis line, I did some more digging into the Rolwich's descended from Eric Rolwich, I have a stack of Kisielius records to sort through, and I'm pretty sure I was able to jump back to this side of the Atlantic with the McPherson line.

I'll work to get updates posted here.

Annie Raulinitis

When the Rolwichs visited for Easter we talked for a long time about the people in our family tree.  As it turns out, they were completely unaware that Zose had existed.  In fact, they didn't know that Margaret Raulinitis had existed either (meaning the branch that split off and became Flanagan is also "lost" for the time being).  They told me that they only knew of one of Peter's sisters, Annie, and that she had gone to the United States.  Ellen, Peter Jr's widow, recalled that Annie had been in occasional contact with Peter Sr., and she believed she had settled in California.

I had no reason to think she'd left Scotland, so I hadn't searched anywhere but here.  But her departure explains why I wasn't able to find a marriage or death record.  So I made a trip to the Genealogy Centre to see what I could find on ancestry.com.

I didn't find much, unfortunately.  In all, I found three trans-Atlantic transit records.  Annie left Glasgow in 1928, at the age of 18, by herself, on the SS Letitia (third class), with £2 in her possession.  Her name is misspelled as "Rawlinities", but Matthew is listed as her father at 178 Rose St., so I'm certain it's her.  She arrived 9 days later in Quebec, bound for the C.W.L. Hostel in Montreal, and it says she "intends to reside permanently in Canada".  On a side note, she was also apparently neither mentally nor physically "defective", something they deemed pertinent to note on the immigration form.

Arriving in Canada, 1928.

Despite what the first document said, she didn't stay in Canada.  In 1932 she pops up on a ship bound for Glasgow from New York City.  And just 12 days later, she was on her way back to New York.  What could have possibly justified the expense and the time to make that journey for such a short time?!  Especially since she was probably in transit longer than she was in Scotland.  It doesn't appear to coincide with any deaths or marriages, so it's a mystery at this point.

Visiting Home, 1932.

Returning to New York, 1932.

A different mystery might be solved, however.  Her return journey to the US was on the SS California.  It looks like she didn't live in California, but rather traveled over there on a ship by that name.  It's easy to see how knowledge passed through the years can retain bits of truth despite not quite being entirely accurate.  Of course, this doesn't rule out that she may still have eventually ended up in the state of California.  The third document does, however, indicate her "last permanent residence" as Scarsdale, an upper class neighborhood in New York where most households had/have servants.  All three documents indicate her occupation as a domestic servant.

SS California

I have so much more I want to know about Annie now.  Could there be more family in New York that we never knew about?  Unfortunately, I've had no luck finding any other trace of her.  It will take persistence.

The McPherson Line

Annoyingly, the Scotland's People archive at the Register House, isn't open on weekends.  So I haven't been able to do anymore Raulinitis or Kisielius searching for a while.  Instead, I've made a few trips to the Genealogy Centre to use their ancestry.com membership.

The first thing that I did was pursue a lead given to me by the Rolwich's.  Their family lore said that Annie Raulinitis emigrated to the United States.  And I was able to confirm it!  Unfortunately, I couldn't get much farther than that.  More here.

Since I was at the Centre, I decided I'd start looking into my Scottish roots from my mother's side of the family.  The annual gathering of the McPherson Clan is coming up in August, and it would be nice to go with some knowledge of which McPhersons it is that I'm related to.  I started with some very basic information:  my great-grandmother was Margaret McPherson and the family was based in Buffalo, NY for at least a generation before the rest of my family arrived in the United States.

I quickly uncovered hoards of McPhersons in the Buffalo area, and most of them seemed to be named Mary, Joseph, or John.  They were Catholic and they had massive families.  I was confident I was related to most of them, but sorting out who is who is a real nightmare with such common names - turns out I'm related to (at least) five Mary McPhersons.  Two of which were born in the same year!  The other complication is that they were really inconsistent with how they reported names on the censuses.  Also the head-of-household responding to the census taker apparently couldn't keep track of the ages of his all his children!  They're all plus or minus two years from census to census.  This is the tree that I've come up with so far:

The McPherson Lineage

I was conservative in how I connected up the documents to form this tree because it would be really easy to mix in Marys and Josephs of other McPherson families (it's an entirely different game than searching for "Rolwich" or "Kisielius"!).  I'm confident what I've got is accurate.  What was really great is that a couple of in-laws showed up on later census records, which helped to trace back even farther.  Mary J Stanton, for example, shows up on the 1910 census as the mother-in-law of my great-great-grandfather, and her father gets listed with her on 1880 census.  That's my great-great-great-great-grandfather, and he was born almost 200 years ago!

1910 Census:  Mary J Stanton is the mother of my great-great-grandmother Frances.

1880 Census:  William Burke is the father of Mary J Stanton.

I've nearly exhausted the census records because I've gotten back far enough to identify which were the actual immigrants and approximately when they came.  They are John P (born about 1820) and Mary (abt 1826) McPherson, who had two children in Scotland before they came, James F (abt 1852) and Mary (abt 1854).  And Joseph and Mary Stanton, and father William Burke, all came from Ireland.  That was interesting to find because I knew I had some Irish ancestry, just not from this branch.  I found more Burkes in Buffalo too, but I'm uncertain about them because there's a big age discrepancy for William.  I'm pretty sure it's an error on the 1880 census because it says he's only 14 years older than his daughter, but I'm not confident enough to make the connection at this point.  Unless there's two William Burkes who are shoemakers in Buffalo, though, it'll be them.

Now the challenge will be to figure out which towns in Scotland and Ireland they came from.  With that information, I ought to be able to trace them in the Old Parish Records and potentially find some still living here!  Unfortunately, the passenger records that I've seen so far don't give nearly enough information to confirm any of their entry dates or their places of origin.  The one below, for example, could very well be us (names and ages match), but there's just no way to be sure.

SS Glasgow passenger list.  Arrival in NYC, 20 Oct 1853.

I also haven't been able to find any record of them being in New York City yet either, which was almost certainly their port of entry.  The family lore says that somebody from that branch (or maybe the O'Neil branch?) made the journey from NYC to Buffalo by foot.