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.

100 years ago

What was happening in Europe?

By 1915 the Lithuanian lands had been under rigid Russian domination for 120 years, as a consequence of the final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. Despite some reforms in the early twentieth century, such as the lifting of the ban on the use of the Lithuanian language in education and on publications using the latin alphabet (1904), czarist rule continued to be repressive. It was only amidst the confusion of the First World War that the first high school with tuition in the Lithuanian language was allowed to be established in Vilnius (1915). The war facilitated the fall of the Russian empire, following which an independent Lithuanian state was established in 1918.    

Russian WWI propaganda poster

Despite initial Russian successes against the Central Powers early in the First World War, by late 1915 the German army had pushed the Russian forces out of Warsaw, Kaunas and Vilnius.  While the stalemate of trench warfare was avoided on the more fluid Eastern front, there were huge military losses and population displacements. In addition to the withdrawal of industry and business into 'mother Russia' ahead of the German advance, Russian military commanders often perceived the minorities living on the western fringes of the empire - such as the Lithuanians, Jews and Poles - as a threat and forcibly deported many to the Russian interior. There may have been 5 or 6 million such refugees; my father was born to such a family in Russia.  

What was happening in Australia?

The events of World War One also take centre stage in Australian history, in particular the Anzacs' landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. The aim of the Allied Powers was to seize Constantinople and establish direct contact with the Russian forces. Unfortunately the Turks were waiting at Gallipoli and the plan ended in tragedy, with a forced withdrawal in December 1915.

Australian WWI propaganda poster

By 1915 the Australian population had reached almost 5 million, having increased from 3 million in the late 1880s. Domestic support for immigration from the British Isles had been strong in the early part of the twentieth century, in keeping with the new federation's strong identification with the British Empire, but the war put a halt to further large migrant intakes. At the same time, domestic antagonism to non-British foreigners and aliens also increased; people of German heritage in particular became targets.  1915 also saw the introduction of a federal income tax proposed, at least initially, to support the war effort.

There were possibly a few hundred Lithuanians already living in most states of Australia in 1915. Some were single men, some had brought families with them from overseas, others had established families here:

• Antanas (Antoni) Alanskas originally from Suvalkija had settled in Western Australia with his wife Ieva/Eva and three young children who had been born in Glasgow during the family's 9 years in Scotland;
• Jonas Balaika, a single man from near Marijampolė, had settled in Sydney having previously lived for 5 years in England and 2 years in Canada;
• Joe Ipp, a Jew from Kaunas who had lived in South Africa for 3 years had arrived in Melbourne in 1914;
• Gerard Skugar, a Pole from Vilnius, arrived in Sydney in 1914 and worked at various locations in Queensland including Brisbane, Mt Morgan and Rockhampton before enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF);
• William Suscavage (?Šuškevičius) from Vilkaviškis arrived around 1914 and settled in Tasmania.   

Despite the war, some people were still able to reach Australia during 1915, for example:

• Adolfas Miškinis (known as Adolph Mishkinis) who had been born in 1889 near Zarasai, arrived in the USA from Libau (now Liepoja, Latvia) in 1910 and became a naturalised US citizen in 1914.  He reached Melbourne in September 1915 as a sailor on an American ship and decided to stay, enlisting in the AIF in November 1915.  He was sent to fight overseas in January 1916; 
• Isadore Solomon Cohen, born in Šakiai in 1890, arrived in Sydney in June 1915, married there in 1916 and settled in New South Wales. Before arriving in Australia he had lived in England from 1903 and in North America from 1909.