Ellen Skierys

One of the earliest Australian Lithuanian women we have any details about was Ellen Petraitis/Peterson Skierys. My thanks to her niece Rosemary Petraitis/Peterson Mitchell for the following biographical outline.

Ellen was born around 1892 in Manchester, England, to a Lithuanian family. Her elder sister Mary had been born in Lithuania only a year earlier, so we can assume the family were very recent immigrants. Her parents Alexandra and Izidorius Petraitis - later known as John Peterson - went on to have another 10 or 11 children in Manchester, but only 7 of their offspring survived to adulthood.

Izidorius Petraitis/John Peterson was a successful tailor who operated his own business in central Manchester until the depression years of the 1930s forced him to close. Not only was the business profitable for Izidorius but it also provided a solid start in life for most of his children who were employed there at one time or another. It also appears he travelled back to Lithuania, at least in the late 1890s, on business matters: earlier posts here and here have recorded the stories of Australian Lithuanians Jonas Vedrinaitis and Ksaveras Skierys and how they seem to have been recruited by Petraitis as apprentices.
 
Ksaveras (also known as Alexander) Skierys lived with the Petraitis family in Manchester for some time, as well as working further afield, including Scotland and Ireland. However in 1911 he departed for Australia, settling in Sydney where he found work as a tailor.  Ellen, who had fallen in love with him in Manchester, decided to follow him. So, at the age of 21 she boarded the 'Irishman' in Liverpool on 20 March 1913 for the two month voyage to Sydney.  There she worked for a tailoring firm in Surrey Hills until she and Ksaveras/Alexander married in 1916.

Ellen and Ksaveras Skierys had three children: Alexander, Nelly and William (Bill). They were active members of the Lithuanian community in Sydney and Nelly, at least, continued the family tradition of entering the tailoring trade, initially indentured to her father.

Ellen and Alexander Skierys, with Nellie (born 1919) and Alexander (born 1917)

Forty years after leaving Manchester Ellen travelled back to revisit England and spend time with her relatives; she returned to Sydney in 1955 with her younger sister Nellie (Angela) who stayed for 18 months.

Ellen died in 1975, Ksaveras in 1961. They are buried at the Woronora cemetery (Sydney) together with two of their children, Nellie and Bill.   

    

Sydney Lithuanians in 1915

An earlier post https://earlylithuaniansinaustralia.blogspot.com/2015/08/sydney-lithuanians-1914.html dealt with early Lithuanians in Sydney around the time of the First World War and included the photograph below. I had mentioned that they had written an article to the American Lithuanian newspaper Lietuva, which they are displaying at the base of the photo, and have now tracked down the article which provides some more detail about their lives here.

Lietuva (meaning Lithuania) was published in Chicago from 1892 to 1920. The article from Sydney was published on 16 April 1915 (not in 1914 as previously thought) and sets out what the authors knew about the small number of Lithuanians in Sydney at the time:

• they knew of 21 people in their circle: 9 men (4 of whom were married and one a widower); 6 women and 6 children [we now know that there were in fact more Lithuanian-born people living in or near Sydney at the time];
• they considered their standard of living to be good; six of their number had acquired property (four owned their own homes and two had parcels of land);
• at least six of these community members worked in the tailoring trade where wages ranged from three to six pounds per week; although the wage rates were good, the cost of living was a little higher than in the UK, in particular accommodation rentals, and this was an incentive to acquire property as quickly as possible; 
• the first Lithuanians they knew about had arrived back in 1887; these were Jonas Mickevičius (John McCowage) and his family - see the above post for more details on him. Jonas was the most well-to-do member of the community, having acquired a home near the centre of the city; one of his sons was a successful Sydney greengrocer. Another early immigrant, Stanislovas Urnėžius (Stanley Urniarz) had arrived in 1904 from Manchuria. All the other Lithuanians in this group had arrived more recently from England or Scotland;   
• the authors contended that opportunities for new immigrants were improving as there was a shortage of labour and the standard of living in Australia was better than in other countries; they looked forward to welcoming more Lithuanian immigrants and growing the size of their community.

If you would like to read the full article (in Lithuanian) it is accessible through https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045284/1915-04-16/ed-1/seq-4/#

The Australian Dictionary of Biography #2

The previous post looked at a few examples of Lithuanian-born individuals who are listed in The Australian Dictionary of Biography.  Here are are a few others with Lithuanian connections.

Victor Martin TRIKOJUS (1902-1985) was the son of Martin August Trikojus and Charlotte Josephine, nee Thompson.  Ancestry.com shows that Martin - also known as Augustus - had been born in Tilsit (Tilžė in Lithuanian), East Prussia, in 1856 and arrived in Sydney in 1881 where he worked as a hairdresser until his death in 1911. The article on his son Victor by L. R. Humphreys in The Australian Dictionary of Biography tells us that Victor was born in Darlinghurst, Sydney, studied in Sydney, Oxford and Munich, and went on to become a distinguished Australian scientist: professor of biochemistry at the University of Melbourne from 1943; foundation member and chairman of the Australian Biochemical Society; fellow and vice-president of the Australian Academy of Science; and foundation member of the Australian Research Grants Committee.



Charles Adam Marie WROBLEWSKI (1855-1936) was born at Grodno (Gardinas in Lithuanian) into a Lithuanian-Polish noble family.  The article on him in The Dictionary of Biography by Bogumila Zongollowicz advises that before arriving in Australia around 1885 Charles had studied chemistry and lived in France and Austria. He initially worked as a chemist and geologist in New South Wales but later went into business for himself.  In 1892 Charles launched a French-language newspaper Le Courrier Australien in Sydney and also, in 1893, the Deutsche-Australische Post for German-speakers.

• Le Courrier Australien earned the distinction of being the longest-running foreign language publication in Australia, being in print for over 120 years; unfortunately, publication appears to have recently ceased.  

• I was interested in the conjunction between this story and one I published last year on John Wedrien (Vedrinaitis) who had inserted this advertisement in Le Courrier Australien in the 1930s:
   
  

Julius Sumner MILLER (1909-1987) was born and died in the USA, but has been included in the Dictionary by virtue of his contribution to science education in Australia.  The article on Professor Julius Sumner Miller in The Dictionary of Australian Biography by Rod Cross tells us that his father (Samuel Miller) had come to the USA from Latvia and his mother (Sarah, nee Newmark) from Lithuania. Trained as a physicist, Julius was attracted to the idea of presenting science through the new medium of television. Between 1962 and 1986 he visited Australia 27 times, primarily for engagements at the University of Sydney but also to record the ABC television show 'Why is it so?' which became very popular largely because of the presenter's infectious enthusiasm and use of drama.  

• I remember my mother telling me that she had met Julius Sumner Miller while she was working at the Grosvenor Hotel in Adelaide and he was a house guest there (that was around the mid 1960s) and that they had spoken about his Lithuanian heritage. 

  

Sydney Lithuanians, 1934

This photo, courtesy of Metraštis No 1 (p15), is of participants at the 1934 Lithuanian Independence Day celebrations in Sydney, organised by the Australian Lithuanian Society:

Presidents of the Society included:

• Jonas Vedrinaitis (John Wedrien): 1929-31;
• Antanas Bauže: 1933-36;
• Jonas Vedrinaitis: 1937-38;
• Kazys Brazauskas (Key Braz): 1939; and
• Antanas Bauže: 1940-50. 

Luda Popenhagen (Australian Lithuanians, p22) records that:

The Honorary Latvian Consul, J McLeod, who was British by birth, was also the official representative of the Lithuanian government in Australia.  Consul McLeod and his wife began attending the Lithuanian Independence Day celebrations in 1934, and continued to be popular guests of honour.  From 1937 onwards the Estonian House in Sydney's city centre was used, as it was close to public transport and contained an auditorium suitable for banquets and concerts.

Popenhagen also provides this snapshot of the economic situation of Australian Lithuanians during the Great Depression [presumably based on Australian Lithuanian Society member records]:

• 23% were wage or salary earners;
• 14% were self-employed;
• 11% were employers;
• 12% were unemployed;
• 40% were not in the workforce

(source: J. Kunca 'Lithuanians' in J. Jupp (ed) The Australian people; an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, 2001, p570)  

Sydney Lithuanians, 1914

This photo (courtesy of Metraštis No. 1, p14) is captioned 'a group of early Lithuanians on a picnic':

The same photo was reproduced in Luda Popenhagen's Australian Lithuanians and titled 'Lithuanian Australians picknicking in Sydney c. 1914, holding Lietuva, the American Lithuanian newspaper which published articles about Lithuanian migrants in Australia'.

We know that John Wedrien (Jonas Vedrinaitis) and Alexander (Ksaveras) Skierys had written an article to Lietuva, which was published on 16 April 1915; see the posts of 5 March and 12 March 2015 for their stories, and that of 14 June 2019 for more about the article they wrote.

I'm confident the man on the far left of the photo is John Wedrien and that the man sitting in the front row (looking down) is Alexander Skierys.

It would be great to identify the ladies and the other two men in this photo.

Perhaps one of the other men was Jonas Mickevičius (known as John McCowage in Sydney)?

Metraštis No 1 (p8) recounts a few elements of Mickevičius' story as told by John Wedrien:

• he arrived in 1887 from the UK with his wife and one child, together with two other Lithuanian men.  The two other men soon returned to London;

• his wife, who according to Vedrinaitis was the first Lithuanian woman to have set foot on Australia, died after 10 years here;

• Jonas had met no other Lithuanians in Australia until a chance encounter with Vedrinaitis at a Sydney market in 1913 or 1914;

• he operated a greengrocer's shop.

Other Lithuanians who were living in Sydney at that time included:

• Jonas Balaika;
• Aleksandras Daukantas;
• Antanas Juknaitis;
• Petras (Peter) Kairaitis and his brother Vincas (Bill) Kairaitis;
• Petras Kazlauskas;
• Pranas Maciunas (Franc Matzonas); and
• Stasys Urniežius (Stanislaus Urniarz)

The Australian Lithuanian Society

Establishment

The Australian Lithuanian Society (Australijos Lietuvių Draugija) was established in Sydney in 1929. The Lithuanian chronicle Metraštis No 1 records that the founders were:

• J Jasiūnas, a former teacher, who returned to Lithuania in 1930;
• Vladas Dapkus, a former railwayman who left Australia for Argentina, and then Lithuania, in 1930;
• Jonas Viedrinaitis (John Wedrien) - see the post of 5 March 2015 for his story; and 
• Ksaveras (Alexander) Skierys - see the post of 12 March 2015 for his story.

Here is my rough translation of the minutes of the first meeting:

On 27 October 1929, we the undersigned having met in the apartment of J Viedrinaitis (Wedrien), East Street, Arncliffe, Sydney, and with him chairing the meeting, decided to establish a Lithuanian society with the object of bringing all of Australia's Lithuanians together.  On a majority vote the following were elected to the society's committee: J Viedrinaitis - president; V Dapkus - secretary; I Geryba - vicepresident; and K Skierys - treasurer.  Audit committee - P Kazlauskas, J Zeleniakas, and M Marcinkevicius. Membership fees: joining fee - 2 shillings and monthly membership fee - 1 shilling.  The committee was tasked with preparing regulations and setting the forward agenda.  Once that has happened, the committee will call an extraordinary general meeting.

[signed: Wedrien, Dapkus, Skierys, Jasiūnas]

The general meeting was held together with a celebration of Lithuania's Independence Day on 20 February 1930.  Participants accepted the draft objectives and regulations prepared by the committee; the principal aim would be to:

Join all those who hold themselves to be Lithuanian in one society with the object of improving coordination among ourselves, the development of national consciousness and education.

An article in the newspaper Australijos Lietuvis on 23 January 1950 recorded that the founding members had been J Vedrinaitis, A Skerys, P Kazlauskas, V Dapkus, J Jasiukevicius, J Geryba, M Marcinkevicius, O Marcinkeviciene and J Zeleniakas. The society maintained ties with Lithuania, organised various national celebrations and family gatherings and tried as much as possible to raise Lithuania and Lithuanian matters in the local Australian press. The first president was Jonas Vedrinaitis, followed by Kazys Brazauskas and then Antanas Bauze. [see the blog post dated 15 December 2019 on the Australian Lithuanian Archive's site https://SAlithohistory.blogspot.com]


Achievements

Much of the Society's activity revolved around the annual celebration of Lithuanian national holidays (e.g. Independence Day in February) and other social events.  Christmas picnics by Sydney beaches were popular and seem to have been held most years from 1929.  The Society's coordination function seemed successful, at least in Sydney where practically all Lithuanians became members.  There was less success outside of Sydney, however; although the Society included members living in Dapto and other NSW centres, no other branches were established.  It was a small localised organisation, with perhaps 100 members, and its leaders and supportive membership base gave it continuity.

The main constraints appeared to be financial (the Society was established just as the Great Depression was starting) and a lack of community resources.  Nevertheless, a library was established around 1933, soon followed by a choir.  Soon, however, the Second World War forced a temporary halt to the social activities of the Society, with the last function held at the end of 1941.  The Society continued its work in a more subdued fashion, for example by raising 30 pounds from its members in 1945 to help displaced Lithuanians in Europe and by lobbying the Australian government in 1946 to allow displaced Lithuanians to migrate to Australia.


Metamorphosis

By the time the Society recommenced its broader activities in 1947, its operating environment had changed dramatically.  The first post-war Lithuanian migrants (displaced persons) had arrived in 1947 and were keen to join.  Over the next few years their numbers continued to grow; a branch of the Society was established in Melbourne in 1948, followed by Adelaide, Bathurst, Beechworth, Bonegilla, Brisbane, Canberra, Greta, Melbourne and Woomera.  By 1950 the Society had been reorganised, reoriented and transformed into the Australian Lithuanian Community, which continues to this day.

One of the enduring legacies of the Society in its later years was the establishment, in 1949, of an Australian Lithuanian community weekly newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) which also continues to this day.

Alexander (Ksaveras) Skierys

Ksaveras Skierys, like his friend and neighbour John Wedrien (see my earlier post), was a co-founder of the Australian Lithuanian Society in Sydney in 1929.  Their stories also have several other parallels.

Skierys was born in Marijampolė in southern Lithuania, around 40km from Wedrien's home town of Kudirkos Naumiestis;

• the modern-day town of Marijampolė was known as Senapilė or Staropolė in czarist times, and Skierys gave his birthplace as Senapilė on his Application for Naturalisation in 1925; 

• he recorded his father's name as Andrius Skierys;

• at the age of 17 (like Wedrien, around 1899) he left for the United Kingdom and, after spending a decade in Scotland, England and Ireland and establishing himself as a tailor (again, like Wedrien) he came to Sydney;

• Skierys was listed as a steerage class passenger aboard the SS Rotorua which sailed from London to Sydney via Hobart, arriving on 21 September 1911.

SS Rotorua; launched 1910, torpedoed and sunk 1917

Skierys and Wedrien knew each other in England and, as noted in the earlier post, Skierys accommodated Wedrien on the latter's arrival in Sydney in 1913 and helped him find employment. Popenhagen in Australian Lithuanians notes that Skierys and Wedrien co-wrote an article on Australian Lithuanians for the American-Lithuanian newspaper Lietuva [the article was published in 1915].

Ksaveras married in Sydney in 1916:

• the NSW state marriage indexes record that 'Askaveros Skierys' married  'Helena Petreytis';

• Skierys' 1925 Application for Naturalisation shows that his wife's birthplace was Manchester, England;

• the bride's maiden name is of interest, because Wedrien's history shows him leaving Lithuania for Manchester in the company of a tailor named Izidorius Petraitis.  It seems at least possible that Helena/Ellen Petraitis-Skierys was related to that Petraitis, also that both Skierys and Wedrien may have worked for Petraitis in Manchester.

By 1925, Skierys was calling himself Alexander and working as a tailor for a major Sydney department store, Farmer's Ltd, in Pitt Street.  He was living at Arncliffe, as was Wedrien, and raising a family with Ellen.

In 1929, together with three others, Skierys founded the Australian Lithuanian Society and was at different times the Society's treasurer and secretary.  

As with the Wedrien family, Alexander (1882-1961) and Ellen (c1895-1978) Skierys are buried at the Woronora cemetery in Sydney, catholic section;

• two of their children, Nellie (1919-2009) and Edward William (?-2008) are also buried at Woronora, while their eldest child Alexander Skierys (1917-1982) was buried in Queensland.

Sources: Metrastis No 1; Australian Lithuanians; National Archives of Australia; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; Ancestry.com 

John Wedrien

Jonas Vedrinaitis/John Wedrien
(source: Metrastis No. 1)

John Wedrien was well-known in Sydney for 40 years. He was a tailor and a keen amateur fisherman. He was also the first president of the Australian Lithuanian Society (in Lithuanian - Australijos Lietuvių Draugija), formed in 1929 in Sydney.

Born in Kudirkos Naumiestis around 1885, he emigrated to Manchester, England, near the end of the nineteenth century where he entered the tailoring trade. He later moved to Scotland and to Australia in 1913, settling in Sydney, New South Wales.

Wedrien's exact Lithuanian surname is unclear, being given as Vedrinaitis (Bauže, 1955) and Viedrinaitis (Metraštis No. 1, 1961); I will use the first variation.

Advertisement in Sydney's French language press
'Le Courrier Australien', 1932 (source: Trove)

Metraštis No. 1 records that Vedrinaitis had left Lithuania for Manchester aged 13 in the company of Izidorius Petraitis, a tailor; presumably he was apprenticed to him. Vedrinaitis is said to have returned to Lithuania when called up for the Russian army as he was concerned he would forfeit his inheritance (two farms) if he did not show up. As it turned out, he was rejected due to his short stature and he then returned to Manchester.

The 1911 Census of England and Wales shows that John Wedrinaitis, a tailor aged 25, single, was a resident of Manchester at that time. He was boarding with his two brothers, Joe aged 23 and Antony aged 21; Joe was a cabinet maker, while Antony was also a tailor. All three are listed as born in Lithuania and of Lithuanian nationality. The younger brother, listed as Anthony Weidrenitos, went on to serve in the Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment from 1914 to 1920, receiving the Victory Medal at the end of World War One. He died in Manchester in 1943.

Jonas Vedrinaitis arrived in Sydney from Bremen with his wife Eva in March 1913 aboard the German passenger ship Friedrich der Grosser (they are shown on the passenger list as Mr and Mrs John Weddrien). He had a friend, Ksavieras Skierys, already living in Sydney, who took them in and helped Jonas find a job. Very soon after arriving in Australia, Vedrinaitis took out a subscription to the American Lithuanian periodical 'Lietuva" and wrote an article for that newspaper about Lithuanians in Australia which was published in 1915.

Antanas Bauže wrote an obituary for Vedrinaitis following his accidental death in March 1955; he had gone fishing with a friend on Botany Bay and presumably drowned when their dinghy capsized during a storm on the night of March 3. His body was only recovered 5 days later. Jonas left behind his wife Eva, daughter Agnieška (Agnes), and sons Antanas (Anthony) and Juozas (Joseph); he was buried at the Woronora catholic cemetery in Sydney.

Expenses for a 1931 social function while Wedrien
was President of the Society (source: Metrastis No. 1) 

Bauže knew Vedrinaitis and his family well; both had been active in the Sydney Lithuanian community. Vedrinaitis was well-established in Arncliffe, Sydney, with his own home as well as a tailoring business. He was president of the Australian Lithuanian Society 1929-31 and 1937-38.

The inaugural meeting of the Australian Lithuanian Society was held on 27 October 1929 at John Wedrien's home, East Street, Arncliffe. I'll cover that organisation's story in a later blog post.



Sources: Obituary for Jonas Vedrinaitis by Antanas Bauže in Mūsų Pastogė, 23 March 1955; Metraštis No. 1; Ancestry.com (UK records, ship's passenger list).