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