Pranas and Natalija ŠEŠKAS

My previous blog post about migration patterns mentioned the Šeškas family; here are a few more details to fill out an interesting story about a couple who decided to make a home and raise a family in Western Australia.

Pranas (known as Frank in Australia, and at times as Seska) was born on 1 January 1892 near Gargždai in western Lithuania, not far from the Baltic Sea. We know little about his early years before arriving in Australia; possibly economic hardship led to him leaving home, or - like so many other young men nearing 20 years of age at that time - he may have left to avoid conscription into the Russian czar's army. Also like many other single men from the Baltics who settled in Australia he may have taken employment as a seaman before arriving in Fremantle in 1912. He remained in Australia for the next decade, somehow resisting the social and economic pressures to join the AIF during the First World War and, although working at manual jobs, seems to have done reasonably well for himself.  We next find him back in newly-independent Lithuania in 1922 and applying for a Lithuanian passport (up to that point in Australia he was classified as a Russian alien, having been born in the czarist empire).

Pranas - application for a Lithuanian passport, 1922

While in Lithuania Pranas would have met his future wife Natalija. She was born near Kybartai, by the Lithuanian-Prussian border in 1906. He returned to Australia in 1925 and was working at the Port Pirie smelters as a labourer earning a good wage (over 6 pounds per week) when he applied to the Australian government a year later to allow Natalija to emigrate to Australia. At the same time he also sought permission for another Lithuanian friend, Martinas Korallus, to emigrate with Natalija. Approval was granted and the pair arrived in early 1927; Pranas and Natalija married on 1 February 1927 in Port Pirie.

Natalija - her Lithuanian passport, 1926

Pranas' and Natalija's first child was born in Port Pirie in 1928. However that year was marred by a few unpleasant experiences, with Pranas appearing before the Port Pirie courts twice within a period of a month - appearing both as a plaintiff and defendant. In one case he took his friend Korallus to court for outstanding money lent as well as unpaid board and lodgings. Perhaps because of these experiences the family moved to Western Australia where they eventually settled near Perth, first at Muchea and later Baker's Hill.

Five more children were born to Natalija and Pranas in Western Australia from 1929. A recent newspaper feature on one of the Seskas boys [click here], born in 1930, records the lives of Depression-era children on the land and notes that he was raised speaking Lithuanian.  Pranas died in 1967, and Natalija (Natalie) in 1998.
       

South Australia

Much material on Lithuanian migrants in South Australia has already been published by Daina Pocius on her South Australian Lithuanian History blog (SAlithohistory.blogspot.com).  Daina has been posting since January 2008 and has amassed a huge amount of information; her blog was listed as one of the "50 blogs you need to read" in Inside History magazine's 2014 annual genealogy blog awards.

So, rather than replicate what has already been published on the SA Lithuanian History blog, what follows here is a brief commentary and summary of early Lithuanian migration to South Australia.

Lithuanian histories in South Australia before the First World War are problematic:

• the story of Lithuanians amongst the early religious migrants to South Australia has gained much currency, both in Australia and Lithuania.  Luda Popenhagen (Australian Lithuanians, pp16-17), for example, wrote that the first Lithuanians to settle in South Australia were religious refugees from Prussia who arrived with other Lutherans aboard the Skjold in October 1841.  The Lithuanian VARNAS/VARNO family together with other German Lutheran migrants apparently established a new settlement near Adelaide, which they called Lobethal ('valley of praise').  This account appears to have originated from a 1958 article in the Australian Lithuanian weekly Mūsų Pastogė which reported research by Jonas Vanagas, the founder of the Lobethal museum.  However more recent attempts to confirm the existence of this early Lithuanian family have not been successful.  The search continues ..

• another hint of early Lithuanians in South Australia appeared in the US-published Lithuanian Encyclopedia (quoted in Metraštis No 1, p11) which recorded that Lithuanians were employed in an Adelaide glass factory in the late 1880s  and that they had established their own club and chapel.  Again, this claim has not been verified by more recent research.

Previous posts have looked at the Lithuanian Anzacs who reached South Australia in the second decade of the twentieth century and enlisted there:

• John BRENKA (arrived in Australia 1914);
• William Frank JAKS (1914);
• Heyman WOLFSON (1910);
• Charles Oscar ZANDER (1911); and
• Stanley ŽYGAS (1911).

Of these, only Stanley Žygas settled in Adelaide after the war.

Nevertheless, there are fragments of information which show an earlier presence.  Previous posts have looked at nineteenth century settlers from the Memel (Klaipėda) region who came to South Australia, such as John RUSSELL (arrived 1859) and Otto REIGERT (married at Light Pass in 1886).  Later arrivals with links to Lithuania include:

• Lena OBERMAN (nee Todras), born at Kedainiai in 1855, arrived in Australia with her husband Louis and son Joseph in 1892; Lena died in Adelaide in 1934 and Joseph in 1943 (source: www.oberman.org.au/lithuania.htm); 

• Frank GRIFF, possibly from Zagarė, who had arrived in Australia in 1904 and established himself as a successful businessman in Broken Hill, moved to Adelaide with his wife Sophie in the late 1930s (source: Jews of the Outback, pp 131-132) 

• Jacob David GOCHIN, born at Papilė in 1883, married Hannah Morgenstein at Adelaide in 1924 (source: Ancestry.com);

• Antanas (Antone) VIRBICKAS, born at Aukštakalnis around 1888, arrived in Australia 1924 and worked as a wharf labourer at Port Adelaide at least until 1953 (source: Trove);

• Frank (Pranas) ŠEŠKAS and Max Martynas KORALLUS were living in Port Pirie in 1928 (source: Trove).  

Metraštis No 1 (p11) refers to a 1953 article in Mūsų Pastogė which reported that there had been Lithuanians living in Adelaide in 1930 but that unemployment, poverty and hardship had forced most to move to the eastern states; by the early 1950s there were only a few of the early Lithuanians remaining in Adelaide.