Anna Sviatek / Matuolis

I got confirmation today that Anna Sviatek is my grandfather's aunt. I found her marriage certificate from 1912 in New Hampshire. Her maiden name is listed as "Matuolis" (which I know, from relatives in Lithuania, is a misspelling of our name that even one of my grandfather's brothers had). She, of course, wouldn't have been Matuolis or Matulis (the male version of the name), but rather Matuolyte or Matulyte (the female version).

Marriage of Jozef Sviatek and Anna Matuolis, 1912

Also listed on the marriage certificate are her parents, my 2x-great-grandparents. I already knew from Juozas that my 2x-great-grandfather was Mykolas (or "Mikulas" as it is misspelled on the certificate), but I didn't know my 2x-great-grandmother was Katrina "Milasziawicziuke". I can't image that's spelled correctly. The certificate, of course, says that they are from "Russia", as Lithuania was, at that time, under the rule of the Tsar.

I was actually quite surprised to find their marriage certificate in the US. I would have thought they'd have married in Lithuania and then come over together. It would have been unusual in those days for a woman to travel over by herself. The certificate gives her address as 339 Chestnut Street in 1912, and I know from the 1920 census that she arrived in the US in 1909. I'll need to check the 1910 census to see who she was living with when she arrived.


UPDATE:  I checked the 1910 census for 339 Chestnut, and Anna wasn't there. It appears to have been some kind of boarding house for Lithuanian immigrants though. Anna must have moved in later. Joseph lived just around the corner, at 143 Manchester Street, according to their marriage record. I'll need to search the census records by name to figure out where she actually was in 1910, but for that I'll have to go back the Genealogy Centre because I don't have subscription to ancestry.com so I can't do index searches.

339 Chestnut Street, Manchester, NH

Et Cetera

There are a few last remaining things that I made notes of while in Lithuania. I'll just list them here with comments without any real organization. First, Juozas Matulis gave me the following notes. I'm not entirely clear about everything he was saying because everything was being translated, but I'm pretty sure he was telling me that Konstantinas Kemešis and Ona (Kemešite?) were both originally from Žemaitiškių. His note suggests that this is a neighborhood in Panevežys or a town in Panevėžio county, but I can't find it on google maps. The only thing that comes up is Žemaitiškės in the Dzūkija region (southeast of Vilnius), and I'm pretty sure that's not right. It might be that Žemaitiškių was a small village that no longer exists. That was the fate, Raimundas explained, of the other town that Juozas identified, Kurgulai.

Notes made by Juozas Matulis
(the question mark could be because he wasn't certain which county
Kurgulai was in, it is right near the boundary between two)

Kurgulai, Juozas said, is where his grandfather (my 2x-great-grandfather), Mykolas Matulis was born. Raimundas explained that Kurgulai is also where Tevuk was born, but that the house and village don't exist anymore. It was replaced by Mitriunai, where the Soviets built the collective farm. Mitriunai is where the Matulis family was moved to when Kurgulai was demolished. Indeed, Valiukas (Tevuk's brother) still lives there. Raimundas believes all of the records for people that were living in Kurgulai should be in the Počiuneliai book, since that was the closest church. But he said Krekenava is also not far and there could be records there too (particularly marriage records since it is a bigger church).

When I met Valiukas, he was saying that Ona Matuliene/Kemešite, his mother, had 6 sisters. I know one of them was Peturnelia Žukauskiene/Kemešite from Phyllis in New Hampshire. Another, I think, was Veronika ?iene/Kemešite because of what I gathered from photos that were in Phyllis's possession. The others I know nothing about. Some or all of the sisters were actually half-sisters, though, because Konstantinas Kemešis was married three times.

Regina Matulyte, daughter of Vincas, told me that Veronika Kemešite was married to somebody with the name Romeika, which would have made her Veronika Romeikiene. He might have been Latvian because the inscriptions on the back of the photos from Phyllis say they were living in Riga. Regina drew the following tree.

From Regina Matulyte

Another thing I was told by several people was that one of the Matulis brothers (Adolis, I believe) actually spells his name Matuolis. Nobody seemed to know why, exactly, but they all emphasized that he is blood related. Perhaps it was simply because literacy wasn't always what it is today. It could have just been a mistake that ended up sticking. Or maybe it got recorded that way on an official document somewhere along the way and just propagated through. Who knows.

Finally, when I visited the Museum of Genocide, I brought a copy of the photo that Chute has of her brother, and asked if they could help me find information. They explained that they will conduct research on a person, but they need proof of identity. For me that would require documents from me, my dad, Chute, and her brother. But if Chute makes the request directly, there is far less that needs to be submitted. She only needs to write a letter requesting the information and include a copy of her passport, her marriage certificate showing her maiden name, and a birth certificate. Since her birth certificate doesn't exist (as I've mentioned, the Vilkaviškis are incomplete) they said it should be okay without it. The letter she sends them, though, must be notarized - they're taking privacy really seriously. All of it should be sent to:

Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas
LT-01110 Vilnius, Gedeminio prospektas 40/1
Lietuva

Sviatikis

As I already mentioned, when I was in Lithuania I got some help from Raimundas translating the inscriptions on the photos I received from Phyllis. I sent those translations back to Phyllis, along with copies of some photos that were in Juozas's album. Those photos were clearly from the United States because of the cars pictured in them (no such cars were available in the Soviet Union), but Juozas wasn't certain who they were of. My hope was that Phyllis would be able to identify them. I suspected that they had come from her grandmother (Peturnelia Žukauskiene/Kemešite), since her grandmother had received copies of some of the photos that were also in Juozas's album. It must have been the case because she was able to identify most of them as the Žukauskas family.

left to right: Albert Rock (husband of Aniceta Žukauskaite),
Sylvester Žukauskas, and Andrew Žukauskas

left to right:  Andrew Žukauskas, Peturnelia
Žukauskiene/Kemešite, and Sylvester Žukauskas

left to right:  Eva Rock, Aniceta Rock/Žukauskaite,
and Peturnelia Žukauskiene/Kemešite

left to right:  Andrew Žukauskas, Peturnelia
Žukauskiene/Kemešite, and Sylvester Žukauskas

But one of the photos, Phyllis thought, was of Annie "Sviatek". I immediately thought of what Tevuk told me, way back:  his father had two sisters, one of which married somebody by the name of Sviatikis. Annie "Sviatek" may well be his aunt! I had no idea that they gone to the US.

Annie "Sviatek" (Sviatikiene/Matulyte?)
(sister of Silvestras Matulis?)

Phyllis also mentioned that the "Sviatek" family had lived on South Willow Street in Manchester, NH. I had a look in the census records, and sure enough they were there. It shows that Joseph and Anna "Sviatek" were born in Lithuania! He must actually be Joseph (or more likely, Juozas) Sviatikis, and she must be Anna Sviatikiene/Matulyte. That's the first I've seen the problem of having different endings on names solved by dropping them all.

US Census, 1940

Now I'll just need to trace backwards in the US records to see approximately when they arrived, and then have a look in the Lithuanian records to confirm the connection. Hopefully they'll turn up in the Pociuneliai book.

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.