Flights are Booked

I booked a flight to Lithuania for this September!  After just about a lifetime of anticipation, I'll be headed to Lithuania for the very first time.  I've wanted to go with my cousins for years and years, but I finally realized that coordinating something between all of us was going to be near impossible.  And if I left Scotland without going, I'd really regret it (it's less than £100 round trip on a direct flight to Kaunas!).

I'll have about 11 days there, and I'm certain I won't get to do everything I want to do.  I'm going a few days before Jess because I want to spend some time in the family history archive.  I also plan to visit the home towns of my grandparents, Vilkaviskis and Pasvalys.  Before going, I really hope to make contact with some relatives that are still there, but we haven't had contact with them in years and I'm not certain I'll be able to find them (planning to call Chute for info tonight).

Of course, I'm also planning/hoping to get to the famous sites like Trakai Castle, Gediminas Tower, the Hill of Crosses, and the Curonian Spit.  I'd like to get a cooking lesson and learn how to make cepelinai.  And I plan to gorge myself on kugelis, beet soup, and pickles.  I had wanted also to see a Lithuanian basketball game, specifically Zalgiris from Kaunas, but the season doesn't start until the end of September.  On the heavier side of things, I also plan to visit the genocide museum in Vilnius, where I can hopefully get some information about my great-uncle Kazimiras.  September is supposed to be a really nice time to go, as it will have started to cool down.  I really can't wait.

Naming Conventions

It'll probably be a nightmare someday for somebody trying to sort out all the different names/spellings I've been using.  Here's a few notes to make that easier.

First, the Lithuanian naming conventions (as I understand them, anyhow) follow a few simple rules. Men always use the generic family name, for example "Matulis".  These almost always end in -is, -as, or -us for Lithuanians (indeed, they often Lithuanian-ize non-Lithuanian names, such as "President Obamas" or "Michael Jordanas").

For women, the family name is different depending on whether or not she is married. For example, my grandmother's married name is Marija Matuliene - that's a -ene ending tacked onto her husband's family name.  Before she was married, she was called Marija Kisieliute, which is a -te ending tacked onto her father's family name, Kisielius.

That said, however, things are changing and Lithuanian women sometimes choose to use an ambiguous female family name, ending in only -e. This way, it is impossible to know if a woman is married without knowing more about her family. For example, if a woman uses "Matule", you don't know if she is married and her husband is Matulis, or if she is unmarried and her father is Matulis.

Apart from this, Anglicized versions of Lithuanian names rarely use the -ne and -te endings (for example, when I write letters to my grandmother, I usually address them to Marija Matulis, not Marija Matuliene). This is just because people get confused in the English-speaking world when members of the same family have different versions of family names (i.e. father=Matulis, mother=Matuliene, son=Matulis, daughter=Matulyte).

Furthermore, to make something plural, the ending is -ai, not -s. So if there are multiple people from the Matulis family, they are Matuliai. Beyond that, the endings of all nouns in Lithuanian (including names) change depending on how it is being used in a sentence (e.g. to express possession). I think, for example, if you were talking about the house that belongs to Matulis, you would say "namas Matulio". But that's getting beyond my knowledge of the language. Suffice it to say, the endings of names are highly variable. The most important ones to understand are:

• -ne = married Lithuanian woman
• -te = unmarried Lithuanian woman
• -ai = plural

Also, there are a few other things that will certainly be confusing:

• Marija Matuliene is also called "Chute" (short for "machute", which is a poor spelling of "močiutė", which is grandma in Lithuanian).
• Marija also is sometimes written as Maryte, Mary, Maria, or Marie.
• Vacys Matulis is also called "Tevuk" (which is a diminutive of tėvas or "father", meaning "daddy" or "papa", even though he is my grandfather).
• Vacys went by Walter for a short time after arriving in the United States.

An Old Photo

This is Chute (Marija Kisieliute/Matuliene), about 70 years ago, taken in Kaunas. She would have been about 22 at the time.

The Life of Alfred Leitner

I haven't yet, on this blog, mentioned anything about the Leitner branch of my family tree, which is odd because it was with my grandfather, Alfred, that I probably was the closest.  I just haven't had the time to dig into his family tree, and partly because I'm not certain where to start with Austrian records.  He was born there, into a Jewish family, and fled the Nazis in 1938 (or 1939).  The reason I'm posting this now is because I've just come across an interview he gave to the Center for Jewish History about his life and fleeing the holocaust.  The audio is available here:  http://access.cjh.org/348846.  It was a real treat to discover this, as I hadn't heard it until now.  I vaguely remember him mentioning having done it, but I didn't realize it was available online.  The stories are, for the most part, very familiar to me, but it was really great to be able to hear them again.

More Kisielius / Cassells

I was back at the monthly evening session at the Scotland's People archive last night.  My objective this time was to continue to fill out the tree of descendants from Jonas and Magde, as I believe I'm connected to the group through Jonas.  Last time I was able to trace the line through Stasis "Stanley" Cassels (one L) to a family currently living in Glasgow.  This time I traced the line from Jonas "John" Cassells (two Ls) to a family right here in Edinburgh!  Despite the differing spellings (one L or two), I know these families are connected because John and Stanley have the same parents:

John Cassells (two Ls), son of Jonas Kisielus and Magde Pausziute

Stanley Cassels (one L), also the son of Jonas Kisielus and Magde Pausziute

As long as the Lithuanian documents check-out, I've been living within walking distance of cousins for nearly three years now!  I could well have bumped into them walking down the street!

What I found was that John had 6 children, 5 of which survived:  Harry, Helen, Magdaline, John, and Hughina.  Their first child, also called Harry, died at just 3 days.  The second Harry, however, had two children in the 1960s, but I couldn't find any record of them after that.  They might have moved away from Scotland.  Harry died just last year, unfortunately.  Harry's sister, Helen, is the matriarch of the family currently in Edinburgh.  Once I get a hold of the Lithuanian records, I'll definitely try to make contact.  The other three children, Magdaline, John, and Hughina didn't turn up in any other searches.  Two were married, but they don't appear to have had children - at least not in Scotland.

There's still one more daughter of Jonas and Magde, Margaret (1910-1947), but I ran out of time to get anywhere with that.  Margaret married Samuel Rutherford, and they had at least one child, William John Rutherford.  Rutherford is such a common name that it will take a fair bit of searching to trace the rest of that branch.  A job for next time.

Jonas and Magde

After discovering that my great-grandfather's uncle might have been here in Scotland as well, I made a trip back to the Scotland's People archive to search the records yet again.  Turns out that Jonas "John" Kisielius had quite a few descendants.  As long as those Lithuanian records turn out to be correct and I am related to him, it means I have even more living relatives here in Scotland!  Here's what I found:

Jonas (abt 1867 - 1928) was married to Magde Pauziute (abt 1881 - 1958).  They married in November of 1901 in "Russia" (actually Russian-occupied Lithuania), according to several of their children's birth certificates.  They had a total of nine (!) children.  Sadly, most did not survive the early months of their lives.  This is what I've been able to find out about them so far (note that their name is mis-spelled as "Kisielus"):

• Margaret Kisielus, no birth record found, died June 1947 aged 37.  Her death certificate indicates that she was married to Samuel Rutherford.  Her marriage certificate indicates that she had gone by Margaret "Cassells" (two Ls).
• Albinas Kisielus, born June 1912, died Aug 1912
• Jonas Kisielus, born Aug 1913, died Nov 1960 aged 47.  His death certificate indicates that he was married to Agnes Stewart Scammell, he had been a cabinetmaker, he died of lung cancer, and he had changed his name to "John Cassells" (two Ls).
• Stasis Kisielus, born Apr 1915, died May 1978 aged 63.  His death certificate indicates that he was married to Tilly Venys (formerly "Wenis"), he had been a steel erector, he died of cancer, and he had changed his name to "Stanley Cassels" (one L).
• Edward Kisielus, born July 1919, died May 1920
• Monica Kisielus, born Oct 1920, Nov 1921
• Katre Kisielus, born Sept 1921, Nov 1921
• Bernadas Kisielus, born Jan 1923, no death record found
• Alexander Kisielus, born Feb 1925, Oct 1925

Monica and Katre died within 24 hours of each other, barely a year after Edward, all from gastroenteritis.  I can't imagine how traumatic that must have for 11 year old Margaret, 8 year old Jonas, and 6 year old Stasis.  They would have been acutely aware of their own mortality, and reminded of it just a few years later when Alexander died of pneumonia.  Not to mention that their father also died (of a stroke) just a few years after that.

My time before the archive closed was limited, so I only had time to trace the lineage from one of the children completely.  Stasis / "Stanley" had two children, one of which had a son, who himself has two young children.  They were living in Glasgow just a few years ago when the kids were born, so hopefully I will be able to make contact (just a quick search in the phonebook showed that they're not listed).  I will need to go back to the archive to fully trace the lineage from Margaret and Jonas/"John" Jr.

The trail went cold for the last child, Bernadas, so I'll need to do some further searching on him.  He didn't have a death record or a marriage record, which could mean one of a few things:  he changed his name and the records aren't cross referenced as they usually are with "Kisielus" as a former name, he emigrated before marriage, he died overseas (he was the right age to have fought in WWII), or he never married and is still living!  He'd be about 90, and as doubtful as that is, it would be incredible if it happens to be true.

Lots more searching to do.  AND I need to see the Lithuanian records for myself to be sure that I really am connected to Jonas.

Uncle John

Using the information from the Lithuanian records I mentioned in the last post, I've been able to make more connections in the Scottish records!!  It wasn't where I was expecting it though.  I was expecting to be able to identify records of Kazimiras's brothers, but I actually found records of his uncle!  (NOTE:  as I said in the last post, I haven't yet seen the Lithuanian documents myself, so even though I'm confident they're accurate, I won't be certain about what's said below until I get them).

On one of my trips to the Scotland's People archive, I indiscriminately downloaded as many Kisielius records as I could in the minutes before closing in the hope that I'd be able to connect them up at home later on.  I wasn't able to at that time, but I decided to have another look today.  What I found was this:

John Kiselius, died 23 May 1928
Widower of Magde Pauziute

It's the death record for a John Kiselius.  His parents are listed as Piotras Kiselius and Ona Mikoliute.  The spellings aren't precise, but they're close enough as to sound almost exactly the same ("Kis-e-l-ius" vs "Kisielius" and "Mikulyte" vs "Mikoliute").  Odds are he's the brother of Mykolas, my 2x-great-grandfather.  I will need to confirm that Petras/Piotras and Ona had another son that matches the age of this John, before I'm ready to be certain though.  But if that's true, I'm connected distantly to something really tragic.

John and Magde had at least 5 children die in infancy.  Another died in her 30s, and another died in his 40s.  It's hard to imagine what that must have been like for them.  And it's hard to imagine that sort of thing happening in the developed world so recently!

I'll need to make a trip back to the archive to look at their records specifically now that I know there's a likely connection.  I don't think I've yet looked at any of their birth or marriage records.  There's a chance the lineage could continue to another living group!