Lithuanians in Queensland

The previous post about Harry ALEXIS/ALEKSIUNAS who had lived in the Atherton area of far north Queensland for over 30 years until his death in 1950 prompted me to revisit what we have discovered so far about early Lithuanian settlers in Queensland.

Much of what we know about individuals was published in two blog posts last year, imaginatively titled Queensland #1 (7 September 2015) and Queensland #2 (14 September 2015). The following are some more general observations:

Census records

The Australian Census of 1933 - the first one to specify "Lithuania" as a place of birth - recorded 15 people in Queensland who had given that as their place of birth (12 males and 3 females), while the 1947 Census recorded 21 people (13 males and 8 females);

• by 1954, with the influx of post-WW2 migrants, the number of people in Queensland giving Lithuania as their place of birth had jumped to 405, although males continued to predominate approximately 3:1.

These census records provide us with a minimum number for the Lithuanian-born, as some people who had been born before independence in 1918 would likely have recorded their birthplaces as Russia or Germany.

Geographical dispersal

Many Lithuanian-born migrants appear to have settled in regional Queensland, not in the capital city of Brisbane. Metraštis (the Lithuanian Yearbook, 1961) reported EC Phillule's advice that by 1938 there were only two Lithuanians living in Brisbane, although there had been more previously.

• Other localities where settlers put down roots included Rockhampton, Mackay, Proserpine, Charters Towers, Ipswich, Chinchilla, and Mt Isa;
• in contrast, Lithuanian-born migrants to most other Australian states appear to have preferred settling in the capital cities.

Migration patterns

Usually the Lithuanians arrived as single men. Some remained single, others married Australian-born women, for example Edward Charles PHILLULE/PILIULIS married Lydia Annie Klatt in 1915 and William KALIN/KALINAUSKAS married Clarisse McFeeters in 1924.

However there were also some examples of family and chain migration:

• Josephine RUCKMAN, a Pole from Kaunas with Lithuanian citizenship, arrived in 1923 with her two sons and daughter;
• Sigismund ROMASZKIEWICZ, a Pole from Krekenava, arrived in 1910 with his wife and children;
• David BECKER - also known as Alex GRAY - a Jew from Kaunas with Lithuanian citizenship, had arrived in Australia from Palestine in 1927 and was later joined by his wife Hannah (born in Kaunas) and children (born in Sebastopol and Jerusalem).    

Arrivals on the SS Haitan

In the early part of World War 2 (1940) a group of 32 Lithuanians with British citizenship arrived in Brisbane as part of a larger group of evacuees following a journey from the Baltic States across Siberia to Vladivostok, Hong Kong and finally Australia. Theirs is an epic story which has been researched by one of their descendants, Eve Puodžiunaitė Wicks.

The evacuees remained in Brisbane for the duration of the war, but largely dispersed once hostilities had ceased. The Courier Mail of 18 February 1941 included this story:

Social and Dance: Lithuanian national dances were a feature of the programme at a social and dance held in the Danish Hall, South Brisbane, last night by the British-Lithuanian evacuees. Lithuanian songs were given by a mixed choir, and others who contributed items were Mrs Balcunas, Mrs K Puodziunas, Misses Lena Ruskey, M Massey, F Kdesnikas [sic], A Grey, and F Kolesnikas. 

Brisbane's Sunday Mail included the following on 26 November 1944:

Party for Evacuees: Nearly 600 guests ... were entertained yesterday at the New Settlers' League's Christmas party for migrants and evacuees, at the Railway Institute. The oldest guest was Mr G P Page, who is 78. He formerly lived in the Baltic States. ... Other guests were from Great Britain, Poland, Latvia, Esthonia [sic], Lithuania, Roumania, China, Malaya and Darwin. Each child received sweets from the Christmas tree. 

Reverse migration

Alice Blanch CHEHOVSKI was born in Brisbane in 1921 to a Polish father and Russian mother. Her father died soon after and her mother took Alice back to Europe: she lived in Lithuania from approximately 1924 to 1981, studied art in Moscow, and returned to Australia in 1981. She was an active artist in Australia, with several of her paintings (including works completed in Lithuania) collected by the National Gallery of Australia. Alice died in Victoria in 2015.

Tasmania #2

Last week we looked at nineteenth century arrivals in Tasmania.  Here are a few from the first half of the twentieth century; in contrast to the earlier arrivals who were primarily mariners or convicts, the later arrivals were a more diverse group.

William KALIN/KALINOVSKY/KALINAUSKAS), a Lithuanian Anzac who had been born in Žagarė and trained as a tailor, enlisted in Queensland in 1916.  After the war, he led an itinerant life for a few years which including working as a court translator in Tasmania for a short while.  I doubt that the translating involved the Lithuanian language given the extremely small numbers of Lithuanians in Tasmania at any one time; most likely he was utilising his knowledge of other European languages developed during his service as as a interpreter in France 1917-1919.  He later established a tailoring business in Brisbane (see my post of 23 April 2015 http://earlylithuaniansinaustralia.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/lithuanian-anzacs-on-western-front-1.html  and Elena Govor's Russian Anzacs blog post at http://russiananzacs.net/Kalinovsky for more details on William Kalin).


William SUSCAVAGE, born in Vilkaviškis in Lithuania, submitted a notice of intention to seek naturalisation which was published in The Mercury (Hobart) on 4 August 1927.  He stated that he was a Lithuanian national living at Catamaran, southern Tasmania, and had been resident in Australia for 13 years.  On the other hand, the UK outward bound passenger lists on Ancestry.com show a William Suscavage bound for Australia in November 1925 on the Jervis Bay; he was listed as aged 40, retired, with an address in London at the 'Jews Temporary Shelter' in Whitechapel.  One explanation for this apparent discrepancy could be that he had been already resident for 13 years in the British Commonwealth as opposed the Australia.  


Stanislaus Paul SURVILLO, born in Kaunas, submitted his notice of intention to seek naturalisation in The Advocate (Burnie) on 28 September 1933.  He stated that he was a Lithuanian national living in Burnie and had been resident in Australia for 8 years.  In that same year his name also appears in The Advocate in relation to proceedings in the Launceston Divorce Court; records on Ancestry.com show that he had first married in Queensland in 1928 and had remarried in Tasmania by 1936.  The electoral rolls show that he was an electrical engineer; by the early 1940s he was living in Sydney and a partner in a business manufacturing thermostatic expansion valves.  His later years appear to have been spent in Queensland.


Juozas and Balys RUZGAS: Metraštis No.1 (p11) records that a post World War 2 migrant had encountered this father and son living at Gretna, Tasmania, operating a sawmilling business:

• Juozas Ruzgas, born in Sėla on 1 February 1890, married, arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia, in June 1930 without any family members.  The passenger list for the Oronsay listed him as a farm worker and bound for Inglehope Siding, via Pinjarrah, Western Australia. That area was known for its timber industry and it seems possible he was on his way there to obtain work in the timber industry. Unfortunately for him the Great Depression was well under way and competition for jobs would have been stiff.  Interestingly, Juozas travelled with three other Lithuanians aboard the Oronsay - K Zakas, J Vainilavičius and I Levinas - but these three men continued on towards the east coast.  After some time in Western Australia, Juozas also made his way to the east coast and made arrangements to allow his son to join him in Australia;

• Balys Ruzgas, born 6 February 1914 in Lithuania, arrived in Melbourne, Victoria, in February 1938 on the Orion.  Both he and his father appear to have lived in Victoria for the next several years; Balys is recorded as having resided in Abbotsford (a suburb of Melbourne) and also having been associated with the timber industry in northern Victoria.  By the late 1940s he is in Tasmania, known as William Ross, and operating the Ross and Triffitt Sawmill at Rosegarland (near Gretna); that business partnership was dissolved in 1949 and the business subsequently was renamed the Derwent Valley Timber Company.  

• Both father and son appear to have remained in Tasmania.  The 1954 electoral roll shows William Ross and his wife Lena still living at Rosegarland, with William employed as a sawmiller.  Juozas (Joseph) Ruzgas, who continued to use his Lithuanian surname, had a house at nearby New Norfolk.    

 

Juozas Ruzgas - from his Lithuanian passport.

Lithuanian Anzacs on the Western Front #1

Previous posts looked at those who served in the Mediterranean theatres of the First World War - Gallipoli and Egypt/Palestine.  The next several posts will deal with service in France and Belgium (the Western Front).  Again, I have drawn heavily from Elena Govor's Russian Anzacs project.

Twenty four men with origins in Lithuania served for Australia on the Western Front.  A quarter of these men appear to have had Lithuanian heritage; around half were Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews), while the others were of Polish, German, or Byelorussian (or uncertain) backgrounds.

Let's start with the first four of those who appear to have been Lithuanians (clicking on their names will take you to their service records at the National Archives):

John BRENKA
(Here I've largely repeated the information shown on the earlier Gallipoli post:)

AWM memorial panel 61

(source: http://russiananzacs.elena.id.au/)

Arriving at Port Adelaide on 29 September 1914 on the Ajana from Liverpool UK as a single man, he worked at a sawmill in Gumeracha for a short while before enlisting at Adelaide in June 1915.  He served in the Gallipoli campaign as a private in the 10th Battalion, then went on to serve on the Western Front in the 50th Battalion where he died on 23 August 1916 of wounds received in action.  He was buried at the Boulogne East Cemetery in France and is commemorated at the Australian War Memorial and at both the Adelaide and Birdwood war memorials in South Australia.  


William Frank JAKS
Born in the province of Kaunas in 1882, he left czarist Russia around 1900 and lived in England prior to arriving in Australia on the Heathfield in 1914.  He enlisted in April 1916 at Adelaide as a single man, giving his residence as Berri, South Australia, and his occupation as a carpenter.  William served as a private with the 5th Pioneer Battalion (reinforcements) in France and was severely wounded in action in September 1918.  He returned to Adelaide in February 1919 and was discharged later that year.  After the war he was self-employed as a furniture restorer and french polisher in NSW and Queensland, eventually settling in Canberra where he married Madeline Elliott in 1936.  He died there in 1951.


P. KALINAUSKAS/William KALINOVSKY/KALIN

P. Kalinauskas (centre),
Sydney circa 1920
(Source: Metraštis No 1)

Russian Anzacs notes, as reported by Kalinauskas' family, that he left home at 14 working as a ship's cook and spent 3 years in Chicago before arriving in Australia; also that he continued to travel after the war, visiting Lithuania and living in the USA, Tasmania, Broken Hill, Newcastle and Brisbane. Metrastis No 1 includes an early photograph of him (opposite) but there is no first name given, only an initial.  He may have been the Petras Kalinauskas who is recorded on Hamburg shipping lists as sailing from Hamburg to New York in September 1913, however we can't be certain. Born in Zagarė in 1893, he was working as a tailor's cutter before enlisting in Cloncurry (Queensland) in September 1916 as William Kalinovsky, a single man.  As a private and lance corporal he served as an interpreter for the 4th Pioneer Battalion, 12th Battalion and 21st Machine Gun Co. in France 1917-19. His army record shows that he attended a cutting academy in London for several months in 1919.  On return to Australia, William used the surname Kalin from the early 1920s, married Clarisse McFeeters in Broken Hill in 1924 and raised a young family, but died in 1937 while self-employed as a tailor in Brisbane.


John LOVRIAEN

AWM memorial panel 113

(source: http://russiananzacs.elena.id.au/)

Born in Kaunas in 1889, he was working as a labourer at Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) and a single man prior to enlisting in August 1916 at Kalgoorlie.  John saw service as a private with the 27th and 28th Battalions but was killed in action on 20 September 1917 in Belgium.  He left behind a sister, Eva [Ieva] Alanskas/Alanckienė of Bellevue Western Australia, who had arrived in Australia with her family in 1912 having lived in Scotland for several years. Although arrival records for John Lovriaen have not yet been located, it seems possible that he had also reached Australia from Scotland, particularly as his military record lists his religion as Church of England. Western Australian newspaper reports of his death in 1917 show his residence as Bellevue.  He is commemorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium and also at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.


Sources: Ancestry.com; Metrastis No 1; Russian Anzacs; Trove.