Mykolas Kisielius

Last April I wrote about some information I received about my Kisielius family from a contact in Lithuania. He had sent me a transcription of a death record after I had located an entry for Mykolas Kisielius, my 2x-great-grandfather, in a set of photos he had posted online. The information he sent me was just a transcription of the record, not an image of the record itself. Since I always like to see the record myself before being sure about anything, I planned to have a look during my visit to the Lithuanian archive. And so I did.

Mykolas Kisielius, death 26 Feb 1938
(full page view)

All of the information he gave me checks out, including the fact that Mykolas (supposedly) had two sons named Jonas! I actually still suspect that this is a clerical error (and one of the sons was actually called Juozas) but the mistake must have been made by the person creating the original record, not my contact who passed the information along to me. Of course, there is also a chance that they are both called Jonas but only one of them is a son (the other being, perhaps, a nephew).  There is, after all, a 12 year gap between the second Jonas and the next youngest child.

Now that I have this record, I am able to confirm the names of my 3x-great-grandparents: "Petras and Ona Mikulyte Kisieliai" - that is, Petras Kisielius (note that Kisieliai is the plural form of Kisielius) and Ona Mikulyte. This means that the theory I laid out here might actually be true, "John Kiselius" who died in Bellshill Scotland might have been a relative. It all depends on whether or not you're convinced that "Piotras Kiselius" is actually Petras Kisielius and "Ona Mikoliute" is actually Ona Mikulyte (see record here). It's a fairly safe bet.

If it is true, it means that the things I wrote here and here are also true, and more descendants of my Kisielius family are here in Scotland, in fact right here in Edinburgh!

I'd like to find more evidence to support this theory (e.g. a Lithuanian record showing that Petras and Ona did, indeed, have a son called "John" born in 1867), but the trouble is only a very limited number of records for Vilkaviškis survive. Almost nothing is from before 1922.

I do know that "John" married his wife Magde Pausziute in November 1901 in "Russia" (Lithuania was under Imperial Russia at the time), and a marriage record would list his parents, but again the Vilkaviškis records are limited. There's a small chance that the 1911 Scotland census would show where they are from (though it usually isn't more specific than "Russia"). Transit records sometimes list next-of-kin, either in the destination or the origin, so I could search both for their transit or those of Kazimiras Kisielius or Marijona Kisieliute (though these records are partial, at best). My best hope might be a Lithuanian death record for either Piotras or Ona, but the odds that either died after 1922 are slim.

The search continues.


UPDATE (25 Sept 2013): I had another thought. If I could match addresses across records and show that "John" lived with people I know to be my relatives, there's a good chance that he is family. I haven't found an exact match yet, but I did find that "John" lived right nearby my great-grandfather's sister, Marijona. He lived at 3 Pitt Street in Mossend in 1913, and she lived at 8 Pitt Street in 1915 (note that "Kisieliute" is her maiden name and the -te ending is just how maiden names are signified in Lithuanian). And in 1921, "John" is still living in the same place. In fact, I've even got a record that shows he was there in 1915 as well. It's hard to imagine they didn't know each other. And it's also hard to imagine that two people with the Kisielius name ended up just a couple doors from each other just by chance. I know from my great-aunt Kitty Kisieliute that Marijona was brought to Scotland with the help of other Kisielius relatives that were already there. Might that include "John"? I'm becoming more and more convinced.

She Borns There

When my grandmother first told me that the Kisielius and Raulinitis branches of our family had been in Scotland, I was really surprised. I had never heard that until a few days before I was about to move there. Somewhat taken aback, and uncertain I was understanding her less-than-perfect English, I turned to my uncle and he explained that my great-grandmother had spoken with a Scottish accent until the day she died. To which my grandmother added, "yeah, she borns there".

When I arrived in Scotland, I dug into the records at the family history archive and, sure enough, they had been here. In fact, as I've explained extensively elsewhere on this blog, many of them remained and still live here today. The only thing I wasn't able to confirm, though, was that my great-grandmother was actually "borns" here. There was no record of her birth in the Scottish archive. Her marriage to my great-grandfather was here, and she appears on the 1911 census, but there was nothing else. Contradicting what my grandmother believed, the census showed that she was born in "Russia" (Lithuania was, at the time, occupied by Imperial Russia).

1911 Census
Note that "Raulinitis" had already been changed to "Rolwich".

It appeared that she may have just immigrated at a young age. Perhaps she wasn't even aware that she hadn't actually been born in Scotland. When I was in Lithuania, I decided I'd have a look and see if I could find something. The records there are not indexed, so without knowing some fairly specific information, the odds of finding anything are very very slim. What I did know was that her parents, my 2x-great-grandparents, Motiejus and Eva had been married in "Wilna, Russia", modern day Vilnius, in 1900.

Scottish Birth Record of Annie Raulinitis
(my great-grandmother's younger sister)

I began by searching their marriage. I had to get some help for this since the records from that period were, of course, kept in Russian. No luck. I didn't know which church it was, and Vilnius is not a small place. We looked through all the records twice. The person helping me suggested that they probably weren't from Vilnius because of their names (they are more southern Lithuanian names) and it was possible the marriage was actually elsewhere. Since the Vilnius birth records were on the same microfilm roll, however, we decided to have a quick look through. Incredibly, we found her!!

Birth of Sofija Raulinitis, 17 Aug 1901
(microfilm 604-20-289, pg333v-334z, no 757)

It's all in Russian and I can't read of word of it. But the person helping me translated the following. She was baptized in the Church of All Saints, and born to Motiejus Raulinaitis and "Jeva" (Eva) Gureviciute on 17 August 1901 on Naugarduko Street.

As it turn out, she wasn't borns in Scotland afterall. She borns in Lithuania! She did, however, grow up in Glasgow, and lived there until about 20 years of age, when she returned to the village where my grandmother was born, Vilkaviškis.

The Church of All Saints is on Rudininku Street in Vilnius. We went there to have a look. It's your typical Lithuanian church. I had a look around for the baptismal font, but there wasn't one to be found.

Church of All Saints, Vilnius

Rudninku Gatve

Visu Šventuju Bažnyčia

Church of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Lithuanian State Historical Archive

The first few days I was in Lithuania, I went into the State Historical Archive. It was less fruitful than I had hoped, but I did get some important information. Mostly, I just figured out how the place worked. Next time I go I'll be much better prepared, including having some basic knowledge of Russian (e.g. an understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet). Many of the documents I need are written in Russian.

Sadly, there are almost no surviving records for Vilkaviškis**, so I'll be hard pressed to find out much more about the Kisielius lineage. On the upside, there appears to be quite a lot of documents for Počiuneliai (the church closest to my grandfather's childhood farm near Mitriunai), so I should be able to get a fair bit about the Matulis and Kemešis groups. I didn't look into Krekenava yet because I wasn't aware that the families sometimes went to this larger church.

The information that I did get at the archive will have to be posted later because I don't have the time right now. But below are the lists of records that exist for Počiuneliai. I'll need to come back to these later when I'm planning what to look at on my next visit.

Počiuneliai
Births 1865-1915
Marriages 1909-1915
Deaths 1800-1801; 1865-1915

Počiuneliai
Births, Marriages, and Deaths 1916-1923

Počiuneliai
Births, Marriages, Deaths 1924-1939

Records have to be order the day before you wish to look at them. And I believe 10 books can be requested at once. There is a small form that must be filled in there to request the books, but they may also be request by emailing either of the address on the card below.

** the archive does have the following Vilkaviškis records:

• deaths 1922-1938
• marriages 1922-1938
• births 1810-1812; 1922-1938

** some of the index pages are listed here: https://www.facebook.com/pajevonys.wizajny/photos_albums.

Vacys in Lietuva

I've been "friending" distant Matulis relatives on Facebook since my visit over there. Yesterday Sandra, a second cousin, sent me this photo. It is from 1992 when my grandfather visited there.

Tevuk (center) with nephew, also called Vacys, and his
family. The girls are Laura (left) and Sandra (right). Their
brother Benas wasn't born yet. I'm not sure of their
mother's name.

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.

Soviet village near where Tevuk was born.

Tevuk's youngest brother, Valiukas, looks just like him!

Aldona and Arunas

Laimas and his mother, Aldona

Soviet housing in Mitriunai

There's loads more to write about, but I'm going to have to do it in stages.