Return to the Homeland

I'm just back from a return trip to the homeland. This time I brought two cousins from New York. They came over to Scotland at the start of the month, and we all traveled over to Lithuania a few days later. It was a really great time. We did a lot of the same things as I did last year (including meeting a lot of family!), plus a few extras like a journey to Nida, the Hill of Crosses, and caught a couple national basketball games. Jesse (my cousin), not be confused with Jessee (my partner), is a filmmaker, so we also did some shooting to make a short documentary. The plan is to expand it, later on, into a full length movie.

Meeting the Rolwich clan
(Jesse, Martin, Nick, me, Brian)

Festival Time

Portobello Beach

Calton Hill

First stop in Lithuania was Klaipeda and Nida to get a feel for the coastal area and spectacular environments. It was a quick trip, but very nice.

Dunes

Nida

Baltic Sea

We spent most of our time in Vilnius with second cousins, Elena and Vygintas.

Waiting on cepelinai with Elena and Vygintas

Old Town, Vilnius

The view from Elena and Vygintas's top floor flat.

We also met Sandra, another second cousin from another branch of the family.

Film Crew

Waiting of more cepelinai at my favorite place Dvaras Restoranas
(Elena, Sandra, Jesse, Nick, Vygintas, me)

And we took in the sights, such as the famed Vilnius TV Tower and Trakai Castle.

We made a trip to the hallowed grounds of the
Vilnius TV Tower, site of the January 13th events.

Beautiful day at Trakai

Trakai Castle

And back to Vilnius for the night.

Squeezed into the wee elevator on our way back up to V&E's.

Soviet style housing.

Interviewing Vygintas's brother Gytenis.

We also went to see Rumšiskes, an open-air village museum that has a collection of relocated, late 19th and early 20th century homes. They would have been much like the one my grandfather was born in. Unfortunately, we got there rather late and had intermittent downpours, so we didn't actually get to see that much of it. Another visit is definitely in order.

Probably not unlike the house in which Tevuk was born.

Rumšiskes
(Nick, Elena, Jesse, Vygintas)

We stayed nearby at Vygintas's family's place, which was a really nice spot outside of the city. Part of the reason we went there was to get the opportunity to interview his grandmother, who spent 10 years in exile in Siberia. Such an incredible woman. Her memory is quite clouded now, and her stories are circular, but so cheerful in spite of what she endured. She's quite happy now, and we didn't ask her to talk about anything that would have been traumatic (she no doubt witnessed brutality and starvation). Mostly she talked about the bears, which would intrude on their village and eat their berries. The possibility of bear encounters was clearly something that troubled them, as she repeated the story many times. It was a literal danger as well as a metaphorical one, given the symbolism of the Soviet Bear.

We made a circuit up north, as well, to see all the relatives: Pociuneliai, Mitriunai, Pakiršinys, Pasvalys, and Panevežys. We also stopped at Šiauliai to see the Hill of Crosses. It was a long day, and we met quite a few more people than I met last time.

Family branch stemming from Tevuk's brother, Valiukas.

Me, Jesse, Adolis, Nick, Kristina, Elena, Arunas

Nick, Adolis (Tevuk's brother), me, Jesse

Elena, Jesse, Danute, Juozas (Tevuk's brother), Arunas, Nick, me

Juozas and Adolis look like they could be twins, but I believe there's a couple years between them. Last stop before returning to Kaunas was Panevežys to see Ada, Tevuk's neice, and her wife Povilas.

Elena, Nick, Povilas, me, Arunas, Ada
Jesse

Of course we need to try on Povilas's Soviet and Lithuanian police uniforms.

Taking in the sights around Kaunas.

Filming in Old Town, Kaunas

Not quite the pose that močiute was in when she sat here some 70+ years earlier.

That's more like it.

Loreta Matuliene

Old Town, Kaunas

And we couldn't miss Arunas's workshop Potomkinas. When I went there last year, I knew that Jess and Nick would find it incredible, and sure enough they did. It's a massive space with a mish-mash of all sorts of art, projects, meditation space, construction, and junk (marvelous junk!).

Potomkinas

A magical place.

I love the look of some of this old stuff.

I think this would polish up nicely.

And of course Arunas took us on some of his "small excursions" to sites around the city, including the Second Fort, which is an old Imperial Russian emplacement that was bombed by the Germans when they invaded (during WWI).

Arunas looking godly at the Second Fort

Old Town, Kaunas

We saw two basketball games while we were there too, one at the start against Ukraine, and one on our last night against Slovenia. It was really something else! I especially wanted to see the game against Ukraine because of the current political situation. There is strong solidarity between the countries because Lithuanians understand what it's like to be the target of Russian aggression. There was at least a couple Ukrainian flags being flown in the die-hard Lithuanian fan section.

Solidarity

The second game we saw was even more exciting. We had much better seats - just ten rows up from the floor and directly behind Sabonis and Marčiulionis, who were in attendance (not to mention Algirdas Butkevičius, the current Prime Minister). Sabonis frequently attends games as head of the Lithuanian Basketball Federation, but Marčiulionis was there to receive recognition for recently being inducted to the NBA Hall of Fame. It was a hard fought win, and the atmosphere was electric. Loreta came with us for this one, and I'm pretty sure we made a real fan out of her. We all had a really good time.

Sabonis and Marčiulionis!!

Darjus Lavrinovič

Mantas Kalnietis

Jonas Valančiunas

Big stars Sabonis and Marčiulionis awarding up-and-comer Valančiunas
with tournament MVP

Kalnietis accepting the team trophy for going undefeated in the
friendly tournament.

Team Photo

It was a fantastic trip, and it's astonishing how close of a bond you can form in such a short time. Jess and Nick both commented on that as well. It was as though we'd spent years together. They all really made us feel welcome.

Farewell!
(Nick, Loreta, Jesse, and Bella)

Vilnius from above.

Miners!

Made a really interesting discovery today. My mom is visiting from Maryland and we took a trip to the Scottish National Mining Museum. I'd been there before and really enjoyed it, but I didn't get to see the whole exhibit. This time I brought along Veronica's photo of the miners to see if anybody might be able to tell us approximately when it was taken. Before we got a chance to ask anybody, we made a really exciting discovery in one of the displays I'd missed before:  the very same photo was part of their exhibit!!

It's flipped around, as if the negative was in backwards, but's it's very clearly the same group. And it was on the display telling about immigrant miners from Lithuania. Now I'm quite excited that there may be further information. The photo is credited to the North Lanarkshire Council Museum. Presumably one of the other men had a copy, which eventually made it into the collection. I plan to contact them and see what else is in the collection, or where they got it. I showed one of the tour guides my copy, a former miner himself, and he was quite interested as well. He gave me the name of the museum curator and suggested that I arrange a meeting to see what information I may be able to get.

The guide was also able to tell me which mines were the most likely for Kazimiras to have worked in. There were three within walking distance of the Gorbals:  Cardowan, Garscube, and Nitshill. Of those, Cardowan can be ruled out because it was only in operation (1930-1983) after Kazimiras was gone. Garscube was in operation 1850-1966, so that's a possibility. And I'm not sure about Nitshill (there was apparently a major disaster there in 1851, I think, well before Kazimiras arrived).

My original question, about the date of the photo, is somewhat inconclusive, but they were able to tell me that it was almost certainly before Kazimiras left in 1918(ish). The tallow lamps on their hats were not in use much (or at all) beyond then. They guessed that they were from about 1890 (probably before Kazimiras was "doon the pits"), but we decided that it was possible that immigrant miners - likely poorer and further down the ladder - might have still used them. There was one in the collection, which was labeled as being from the 1800s.

Tallow Lamp

I also picked up a book, Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors by Brian Elliott. Now I'll just have to find time to read it!

Photos from the Cassells

On the left is "Auntie Mary Valaitis" (actually Veronica's mother's aunt and my great-grandfather's sister, Marijona Kisieliute). This is who my grandmother used to refer to as "Mrs. Valaitis". I don't think they'd ever met, but I believe they had contact, probably through Christmas cards. Behind her to the right is "Helen", who I think is Mary's daughter, Helen Tracy. This is the person that my grandmother first told me to look for when she found out I was moving to Scotland. Unfortunately, she has passed away. The elderly woman in the middle is "Gran Kisielius", the matriarch Magde Pausziute / Kisieliene. To her right is Juozas "Joe" Valaitis and Ona Manning (Kisieliute), Veronica's mother.

Marijona, Helen, Magde, Juozas, Ona

I also made some higher resolution scans of photos I posed before. These two are Jonas Kisielius and his wife Magde Pausziute. I think they come from their alien register passbooks that Lithuanian immigrants had to carry during World War I. It's a real shame we don't have those documents!

Jonas and Magde

This is a group of steelworkers playing cards. Veronica told me the men used to go out and gamble at one of the slag heaps. She believes one of them is her grandfather Jonas.

Steelworkers

This is a group of miners that I posted before. I still suspect that the one of the left is my great grandfather Kazimieras Kisielius, but I can't be sure. Chute didn't recognize him when I showed her the (low resolution) printout, but she couldn't see very well at the time. I'm not certain when the photo was taken, but that could probably be determined by the equipment the miners have with them. If it's from around the early 1900s, there's a good chance one of them is him.

Miners in Lanarkshire

I also made a much higher resolution (110Mb) copy of Jonas's Imperial Army passbook, a really incredible document. I hope to get some help making a second translation of it from a cousin in Lithuania when I go back there this August. Hopefully, he'll be able to get a little more detail than Veronica originally had.

I've also got a stack of other Kisielius family photos, but I'm not certain who all the people in them are yet. Once I get Veronica and Helen (Peat not Tracy) to fill in the blanks, I'll post them here.

Meeting the Cassells

As I said already, I've been quite negligent about keeping this blog up to date. At the start of March I met some "long lost" relatives from the Kisielius line and didn't even get around to posting anything about it here! We had them over for lunch and it was a really lovely time. They even lent me some old photos (many of the same ones that Veronica sent photocopies of previously, but many new ones as well), plus they let me borrow Jonas Kisielius' Tsarist Russian military passbook from over 100 years ago! I've made scans and will post them soon.

Helen, me, Veronica
(second cousins, twice removed)

We've been planning to meet up again, but it's been a while since we've all been in the same country. Veronica has a home in California and Helen has one in Spain.

NOTE: Actually, it's quite misleading to title this post "Meeting the Cassells" because neither Helen nor Veronica carries that name. "Cassells" and "Cassels" were the names that the Kisielius group adopted here in Scotland.

Tapestry Launch

It's been ages since I've written anything. And I really should have, as I even made contact with some new "long lost" relatives back at the start of March! From the Kisielius group this time. But I've been so busy trying to finish my dissertation that I've not had any time for extra writing. I'm only writing this brief post now because the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry is finally complete and the grand opening was this weekend. This is the promotional video:


Jessee and I rode our bikes out to Prestonpans where it's being displayed, just to see it. I was very excited to see the "reverse diaspora" panel of the Scottish Lithuanian community that I'd contributed ideas to. To my surprise (and dismay!) it wasn't there. There were three other panels for the Scottish communities that had settled in Lithuania, but the fourth one was missing. I'm not sure what happened, but I was very disappointed. I suspect they weren't able to find enough stitchers and it didn't get completed. A real shame. The thought crossed my mind that I should contact them and offer to do the stitching myself but, as I said, I've really been bogged down with writing - that and I have no clue how to do needlepoint!

These were the panels that they did have up: