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.

Arrivals from China and Japan

The Australian Lithuanian Community Archives are located in Adelaide, South Australia, and managed by Daina Pocius. In 2016 Daina posted an interesting item on her blog 'SA Lithuanian History' about Lithuanians in Harbin, China, in the 1930s (click here for a link to that post). That prompted me to think about what other records might exist of Lithuanians arriving in Australia from Harbin (Manchuria) or elsewhere in East Asia.

China, early 1930s, with Japanese occupied Manchuria and Harbin (source:http://www.balticasia.lt/straipsniai/istorija/lietuviai-kinijoje-xix-1940-m/ ) 

A 2014 article 'Lithuanians in China, 19th Century to 1940' by Gediminas Giedraitis on the BalticAsia website (in Lithuanian) provided an introduction to how and why some people had made their way to eastern China, over 4000 km from their birthplace. The first group to arrive were participants or supporters of the 1863 uprising who had been banished to Siberia and from there escaped into China. They were followed by several other waves of deported or displaced Lithuanians who also decided that life in China was a better option. There was also one significant group of voluntary migrants, the construction workers who came to work on the East China Railway at the end of the 19th century and stayed. By the 1930s there were an estimated 1000 Lithuanians residing in eastern China, including perhaps 350 in Harbin and 150 in Shanghai.

Lithuanians in Shanghai (1920s/30s)
 (source:http://www.balticasia.lt/straipsniai/istorija/lietuviai-kinijoje-xix-1940-m/)  

Then I consulted Elena Govor's book Russian Anzacs in Australian History and found that the route from the Russian Far East to Australia was not an unusual migratory route in the early 20th century (pp 22-23):

This choice of route was encouraged to some extent by the activities of emigration agents in far-eastern ports and the availability of steamship services to Australia. These Russians usually came via Harbin (China) and the Japanese port of Moji, from where Japanese steamships sailed ... [to] Darwin, Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.  ... Almost all of them disembarked at Brisbane.

Here are some examples of these migration patterns. Although in many cases we have scant details, there is enough to see that this was a regular corridor for people who had either settled in China or used it as a transit route:

1910: The ROMASZKIEWICZ family arrived in Brisbane from Nagasaki, Japan, aboard the Kumano Maru. Sigismund Romaszkiewicz was born in Krekenava, Lithuania, in 1876 and appears to have lived in Harbin from at least 1900; this link to the Russian Anzacs website provides more details.

1911: The DAPKEWITCH family arrived in Brisbane aboard the Yawata Maru. Jan (John) Dapkewitch had been born in Vilkaviskis in 1877 and married Paulina Svershchevska in Harbin in 1905. They had had two children before arriving in Australia: Nina, born in Belarus in 1906, and John, born in Kamchatka in 1910 (source: Foster Family Tree on ancestry.com.au).

1911: Vladislav SCHILLER arrived as a single man in Melbourne on the regular steamer service operated by the Yawata Maru. He was born in Lida or Vilnius in 1889, had worked in Harbin on the railway, and soon found employment as a fitter and turner at West Footscray. He married Elizabeh Eldridge in 1915 and was naturalised in 1922. Vladislav later moved to Sydney and died there in 1968 (source: Turnbull Wasson Tree on Ancestry.com.au).

1911: Joseph MANJIKE, born in 1873 in Vilnius, arrived in Brisbane from Manchuria. See my earlier post on Joseph here.

1914: Edward Charles PHILLULE (?PILIULIS), born in 1881, arrived in Brisbane from Japan aboard the St Albans; see my earlier post on E C Phillule here.

1923: Josephine RUCKMAN, born in 1863 in Kaunas, arrived at Brisbane on the Yoshino Maru with her sons John and Felix and a daughter (source: National Archives of Australia).

1923: Bronislau KRETOVITCH, born in Vilnius in 1889, had first arrived in Brisbane on the Yawata Maru in 1911 leaving his wife Vida and family behind in Harbin. After service in the AIF during World War 1 (see the Russian Anzacs link here) he made a return visit to Harbin and then came back to Australia in 1923, arriving in Melbourne from Kobe on the Tango Maru.  He was followed by his daughter Jadvyga Kretovitch who arrived in Melbourne in 1928 on the Aki Maru.    

1938: The AGRANOFF family arrived in Sydney aboard the Kamo Maru. The Jewish parents Chaim and Rachel had been born in Lithuania, but their children Faivel (Paul) and Sara Lia were born and raised in Harbin (source: National Archives of Australia).

Harbin in the 1920s (commercial postcard)

In 2020 Laurynas Kudijanovas, a student at Vilnius University, wrote his Master's thesis about Lithuanians in Asia during the early 20th century 'Lietuviai Azijoje 1900–1939 metais: kultūrinės istorijos siužetai apie lietuvybės raišką ir diplomatus Rytų kraštuose'. His research sources included this blog and the Australian Lithuanian Archives.

  

Queensland #2

Last week's post outlined early Lithuanian migration to Queensland and mentioned one of those settlers, E C Phillule:

Edward Charles PHILLULE (PILIULIS)

E C Phillule appears to have been an energetic personality.  My post of 8 June 2015 described two of his letters to the editor, one to The Telegraph (Brisbane) printed on 20 July 1917 and one to Karys (Kaunas, Lithuania) printed in 1920; both letters were strongly in support of Lithuania's struggle for independence.

Despite the very small number of ethnic Lithuanians there at the time, Phillule 'had great ambitions for the Lithuanian community in Brisbane in the 1930s', as described by Luda Popenhagen in Australian Lithuanians pp 24-25:

After arrival in Australia his first job was as a taxi-driver; he then purchased a service station, and eventually entered the import-export business.   He drew up plans to build a Lithuanian club at his own expense, and whose design would combine traditional motifs and contemporary architecture.  It was intended to function as a large-scale centre promoting Lithuanian culture to the greater Australian public.  The Australian Lithuanian Society .. [based in Sydney, of which he was an honorary member] .. was consulted about the plans ... Unfortunately, disagreements on administrative and technical details prevailed, and the project was abandoned.

After WWII broke out in 1939 .. [he was] able to assist Lithuanian migrants who arrived in Brisbane.  In 1940 approximately thirty Lithuanians arrived from Vladivostok. ... [They] were destitute and needed assistance to acclimatise to living in Brisbane.  The generosity of Paliulis and another Lithuanian businessman, Ruzgys, came to the rescue of many newly arrived Lithuanian families in Brisbane during WWII. 

Edward Charles Phillule's background before arriving in Australia is unclear.  He applied for British citizenship in Brisbane in July 1916, stating on his application for naturalisation that he was born on on 4 March 1881 in Chicago Illinois (USA) and that he was an American citizen by birth.  On the other hand, the headstone on his grave in Brisbane tells us that he was born in Lithuania.  I have not been able to confirm either claim.

His application for naturalisation also states that he arrived in Brisbane from 'Russia, Lithuanian' on 9 July 1915 aboard the 'Sant Albons'.  The St Albans did dock at Brisbane on that day, so it seems likely that he was indeed aboard, one of '20 Russians' whose names are not listed.  The St Albans sailed to Australia from Japan, so it appears that Phillule may have departed from the Russian Far East.  His spelling of the ship's name as 'Sant Albons' suggests a primarily Russian, as opposed to American, education.

Phillule married Lydia Annie Klatt in Brisbane in September 1915.  His application for naturalisation the following year shows that they were living on the corner of Hope and Melbourne streets in South Brisbane and that he was a shopkeeper.  His request for naturalisation was granted in August 1916.

By the mid 1920s he was operating a garage and auto workshop and had become a successful small businessman in Brisbane.  Trove carries numerous newspaper references to Phillule's business dealings, including advertisements for rental accommodation and automotive services; there were also fines for false income tax returns.  E C Phillule sold his Clayfield service station, locally known as 'Phillul's garage', for 4000 pounds in 1939.

He died in February 1945, aged 64, and was buried at Lutwyche Cemetery, Brisbane.  His grave displays two of the important elements in his life: his Lithuanian identity (the Lithuanian cross in the centre) and Freemasonry (the masonic symbols on the left and right).

Source: Ancestry.com. Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index,
1800s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012

Notes:  The secondary records variously show this man's Lithuanian surname as Piliulis or Paliulis.  I have used Piliulis as per Metraštis No. 1.

Sources: Trove; National Archives of Australia; Ancestry.com; Australian Lithuanians.

Queensland #1

Migrants with origins in Lithuania started settling in Queensland in the second half of the nineteenth century.  However it was not until after World War 2 that larger numbers were located there; for example, several hundred Lithuanian DPs (displaced persons) were brought to Queensland in 1948 and 1949 to cut sugar cane.  While most of these workers did not stay on the cane fields for longer than required, some settled further south and helped establish a Lithuanian community in Brisbane.

Probably one of the earliest migrants was Lewis FLEGELTAUB.  Born in the Suvalkija region in a Jewish family, he became a successful Australian businessman and died in Brisbane in 1897.  Trove and Ancestry.com contain more details of the Flegeltaub family.

Previous posts have noted men with origins in Lithuania who enlisted in Queensland during World War I:

• P. KALINAUSKAS/ William KALINOVSKY/KALIN from Žagarė who enlisted at Cloncurry and served on the Western Front.  After the war he eventually settled in Brisbane and died there in 1937;
• Sigismund ROMASZKIEWICZ, a Russian Pole from Krekenava who enlisted in Brisbane and also served on the Western Front.  He lived in Brisbane until his death in 1949;
• Gerard SKUGAR, a Pole from Vilnius, who enlisted at Rockhampton and also served on the Western Front.  

In addition the following Queensland ANZACS who are listed on the russiananzacs.net site appear likely to have had Lithuanian origins:

• Jack/Ivan TRINKOON (TRINKŪNAS?) from Brisbane.  Although born in Riga (Latvia), his service records show that his father was from Vilnius;
• Charles Anton GEDGAWD (GEDGAUDAS?) from Charters Towers, born in Libau/Liepaja (Latvia) is associated with very Lithuanian names; his mother Domicelė referred to him as Kasimir (Kazimieras). 

The interwar years saw small numbers settling in Brisbane and regional Queensland.  In contrast to other Australian ports, arrivals at Brisbane often came from China or the Russian Far East.  Most of these settlers had Jewish, Polish, Russian or Prussian heritage, for example:

• Chane MILERIS, known as Noel Miller, had arrived in 1930 as a Lithuanian national and was living in Brisbane in 1938;
• Abraham WEINER/Alfred WYNER, a Lithuanian national born in Courland (Latvia) arrived in Australia around 1913 and was living in Brisbane in 1939;
• Jan/John DAPKEWITCH from Vilkaviškis had married in Harbin, China, in 1905. He died in Ipswich in 1941 aged 63;
• Josephine RUCKMAN, a Polish widow from Kaunas with Lithuanian citizenship, arrived in Brisbane on the Yoshina Maru in 1923 with her two sons John and Felix and daughter-in-law Klara in 1943, aged 77, she was living in Mackay and one son was farming at Alligator Creek near Mackay;
• Anton YUSKAN (from Lithuania but birth location not stated) married in Proserpine and died there in 1973 aged 84;
• Veniamin SAMOLLOFF, a Lithuanian national from Kaunas, had arrived around 1925 and was living at Victoria Point, near Brisbane, in 1932;
• Bruno GREITSCHUS, a Lithuanian national from Memel (Klaipėda), had arrived around 1925 and was working at Goolburra Station, Offham Siding (western Queensland) in 1937;
• Frederich WEDRAT, also from Memel, had arrived in 1910 and was living at Chinchilla when he died in 1963, aged 73.

The 1933 Australian Census recorded 12 males and 3 females who had been born in Lithuania and were then living in Queensland; 4 of the men were living in 'tropical Queensland'.

Prior to World War 2 there was only a handful of ethnic Lithuanians living in Queensland at any one time.  Metrastis No. 1 (p10) records that Edward Charles PHILLULE (PILIULIS) wrote in 1938 that there had been five Lithuanians in Brisbane but two had died, one had returned to Lithuania, and there there were only two left.  The other Lithuanian referred to in that correspondence was probably RUZGYS (Australian Lithuanians, p25).

The first significant influx of Lithuanians to Queensland occurred in 1940 when 30 Lithuanian refugees with British citizenship arrived from Vladivostok aboard the Haitan.

Next week's post will look at one of the few ethnic Lithuanians living in Queensland at that time, E. C. Phillule. 

Two historic letters from Brisbane?

Thanks to Tony Čibiras of Canberra who located and forwarded this 1920 letter to the editor, sent from Brisbane to the newspaper Karys (the Soldier) in Kaunas, Lithuania:

(source: http://www.epaveldas.lt/object/recordDescription/LNB/LNB09C582CB)

In brief, the letter begins with references to Lithuania's rebirth and struggle for independence (while independence had been proclaimed in February 1918, it took several years to secure the new state's borders and gain full international recognition; e.g. from Soviet Russia in 1920, Switzerland in 1921, and the USA in 1922).

The writer, E Pilyps, regrets that he is not able to help in the wars for independence but encloses one US dollar and hopes that he might receive at least a few editions of the newspaper.  One dollar was probably not a large amount in 1920 (a public school teacher in the US earned around $1000 per annum) but it may have been similar to someone sending say $50 today.

I'm not aware of any other articles or letters sent from Australia to publications in Lithuania so early in the twentieth century; perhaps this was the first one?

*******

Here is another letter that I also found interesting for a few reasons; this one was published in The Telegraph, a Brisbane newspaper, on 20 July 1917:

 (source: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/177897273?searchTerm=phillule&searchLimits=)

Luda Popenhagen (Australian Lithuanians pp 24-25) wrote about E.C Phillules, giving his Lithuanian surname as Paliulis or Piliulis.  He was 'a self-made man with great ambitions for the Lithuanian community in Brisbane in the 1930s'.  Given that he wrote this letter to The Telegraph during the First World War, he appears to have been promoting Lithuania much earlier.

Although I have no hard evidence to back this with, my feeling is that the two writers above - Edward Charles Phillule and the person who signed his name as E Pilyps - were probably the same.  How many Lithuanians could there have been in Brisbane with the same initials who wrote letters to newspapers?

We know that Edward Charles Phillule arrived in Australia around 1914 and died in Brisbane in 1945.  However I have found no record of anyone called E Pilyps, which leads me to assume it was a pseudonym.

I'm also not aware of any earlier letters to Australian publications on a Lithuanian topic.  Perhaps this was the first?