Kisielius Photos

I received a letter from Ronnie the other day with copies of some really great photos! Of them, this one really caught my attention.

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:

Jonas and Magde
(Ronnie's grandparents, Kazimiras' aunt and uncle)

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.

Jonas's name in Russian was apparently "Ivan Peter Kisiel"
He enlisted in 1889 and served until 1904.

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.

Kisielius Connection

Things are really starting to come together with the Kisielius branch. Helen Peat, who I spoke to Wednesday, passed my letter along to her cousin Veronica (or "Ronnie"), who then emailed me. She is another second-cousin, twice-removed to me. And she also seems very interested to hear about the connection between us - a real delight. I didn't have her on the tree that I sent along to Helen because, it seems, her mother Ona (another child of Jonas and Magda) was born outside of Scotland. So I wouldn't have found a birth record.

Tree I sent to Helen. Ona was a sibling of John, Margaret, and Stanley.
Ronnie is the daughter of Ona.

According to Ronnie, her mother Ona was born in St. Petersburg. I know that Jonas and Magda were married in "Russia" in 1901, but I had been assuming that it was really Lithuania since Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire at the time. These are important pieces of information to get in order to track down where everybody has been. Ronnie also says she has Jonas's army passbook. I'm assuming that's why they were in Russia. It doesn't seem that it would have been from 1917 when Kazimiras would have been sent to Russia from Scotland, but I don't know yet. I'll be really interested to see more about that.

Ronnie mentioned that she only recently (7 or 8 years ago) moved back to Scotland from California, so she was asking about where we were based in the US. I explained the whole story that the family fled from Lithuania in 1944 (or 1945?) and stayed in a displaced persons camp in Germany until 1948, then went to New Hampshire, then Connecticut, and finally to the farm in East Schodack. And that's when it all started to come together.

Ronnie recalls that when she was about 8-12 years old they had visitors that came from "Belsen", who they called aunt and uncle. Presumably "Belsen" is the Bergen-Belson displaced persons camp. I don't really know much about it, but I'm going to look into it. Ronnie says, though, that they were called Sophie and Charlie. That's Zose and Kazimiras!! My great-grandparents! I knew already that they had passed through the UK on the way to the US because I found a transit record.

Transit record of my great-grandparents to USA.

I always wondered why they didn't go back to Glasgow at that time, but it appears that they did, at least briefly. Perhaps they continued to the US because there seemed to be greater opportunity. The postwar era in most of Europe was really challenging. It's interesting to hear that they might be been in Belsen because I thought, from Chute, they had been in a camp near Munich. Maybe they were in different places. I will need to get more information from Chute next month.

Ronnie also explained that her mother kept up correspondence, and she even still had the addresses, leaving little doubt about the connection! They were:

Mrs Jessie Kisielius
105 South Willow St
Manchester NH

and

Mrs M Musulis  (Jessie's daughter)
101 Pleasant St
New Britain - Conn.

"Jessie", I know, is another name that was used by Sophie/Zose (see also here). And I know that there were other family connections South Willow Street in Manchester. "Mrs M Musulis" is, no doubt, Marija Matulis, Chute, my grandmother! The connection from me to Ronnie, Helen, and the other Cassells is closer than I thought. A "second-cousin, twice removed" is pretty distant, but to learn that my grandmother's address was in their address book somehow makes it feel much closer.

Encouraged by this, I asked Ronnie if she knew Helen Tracy, who is a descendant of Marijona Kisielius (Kisieliute/Valaitiene), the sister of Kazimiras. I've tried several times to make contact, but have been unsuccessful. Sure enough, Ronnie knew her!! She even referred to her as "cousin" (technically they were second cousins). Everything is finally coming full circle. "Helen Tracy [and] Louis" were the first people that Chute told me to look for when I was leaving for Scotland.

This is all that Chute gave me to go on.

It's taken three years, and I've already uncovered more than I ever expected that I would, but it seems that I'm finally getting close to having the full story.

A Phone Call

On Monday I sent a letter to one of the descendants of Jonas and Magda, Helen, a "second-cousin, twice-removed", explaining the connection between us. She called me back this morning. I was really pleased to find that she seemed quite interested in the family history! And it sounds as though she knows a good bit more information. She remembers Magda, and she said her father even spoke Lithuanian. She also said she has Jonas's identity card from his time in the White Army. I'll be really interested to know more about that, since it could be relevant to why his branch of family was able to remain in Scotland. I believe my great-grandfather Kazimiras was denied re-entry to Scotland after being sent away to the north of Russia during WWI (those that couldn't "prove loyalty" using such documents weren't allowed back in). It is, I believe, the reason my branch of the family left Scotland and re-settled in Lithuania.

Helen is getting in contact with some of her relatives that, she thinks, know more. Hopefully I'll fill in even more of the story.

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.