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| Scottish Miners |
One of them could quite possibly be my great-grandfather Kazimiras. I'm not certain how old the photo is, or if it is old enough to be from when Kazimiras was still in Scotland (pre-1917), but Ronnie didn't think it was her grandfather Jonas because he was a steelworker, not a miner. I see a resemblance to the guy all the way to the left, but it might just be wishful thinking. I will need to ask Chute when I'm back there next week. Hopefully she will be able to identify him. He was her father so she would know his face, of course, but her vision isn't the best, so I'm not certain she'll be able to see the detail.
Some of the other photos are very interesting too:
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| Jonas and Magde (Ronnie's grandparents, Kazimiras' aunt and uncle) |
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| This is the "Mrs Valaitis" that Chute has spoken of before, with Ronnie's mother Ona. |
The other thing Ronnie sent was a photocopy of her grandfather Jonas's Russian army passbook. It has some English translations, but I will need to get some help translating the rest. It is from a time before WWI, not from when the Lithuanians in Scotland were deported under the Anglo-Russian Military Convention. Jonas would have been old enough to be exempt by then.
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| Jonas's name in Russian was apparently "Ivan Peter Kisiel" He enlisted in 1889 and served until 1904. |
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| This page shows that he had checked in at the Imperial Russian Consulate in Glasgow in June 1916. I wonder if this is a sign of the preparations being made for the Anglo-Russian Military Convention that went into force the next year. |
I found the passbook particularly interesting because, had my great-grandfather had such documentation when he was deported, it would have been his ticket back to Scotland after the War.* After the Lithuanian immigrants were sent from Scotland to Russia, they weren't allowed to come back if they couldn't "prove loyalty". Some had been involved with the Red Army at the start of the Bolshevik Revolution. If they couldn't produce a White Army passbook, they were suspect.
Digital copies of the photos and passbook are here:
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/5h7ehrdtexjbfjr/from_ronnie_1.pdf?dl=1
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/jdhjlvuu3ffcqq4/from_ronnie_2.pdf?dl=1
* I should note that I don't yet have confirmation that Kazimiras was, in fact, deported under the 1917 Convention. But I am confident that he was.
