Dailidė family history

Late last year I was very fortunate to come across a marvelous new publication, a family history of William and Margaret DELADE who arrived in Australia from Scotland in the 1920s:

Tėvynės: The Homeland, a family history of Margaret and William Delade,
published in 2013 by Robert Staib and Roslyn Staib, Sydney
(see the National Library of Australia's listing here)

Not only does this book tell the story of William Delade (Vincas Dailidė) and his wife Margaret (Magdalena Deckerie/Dekerytė) as well as their extended families in Lithuania and Scotland, it also serves as a valuable resource for social and migration history.  It is a particularly significant contribution in that there have been so few Australian Lithuanian family histories published to date.

The 88 page publication is attractively packed with colour photos, maps and tables as well as a very readable text.  It was awarded 3rd prize in the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies' 2013 Alexander Henderson Awards for Best Australian Family History (see link here).

I particularly liked the outlines of political, social and economic conditions in late 19th century Lithuania and early 20th century Scotland which helped place migration decisions in context.  An interesting point was that the majority of the Lithuanians in Scotland had - like Vincas Dailidė and Margaret Deckerie's parents - come from the Suvalkija region of Lithuania.  The discussion of the Anglo-Russian Military Convention of 1917 which in effect forced most Lithuanian men in Britain to choose between conscription into the British Army and deportation for service in the Czar's Army, with profound consequences for the families involved, was illuminating.

The authors drew on a range of source material for the 13 chapters of the book, including apparently well-documented records of family memories, a visit to Lithuania in 2011, and an impressive number of referenced publications.  The book assists the reader with useful appendices on Lithuanian surnames, a family time line, a family tree, a list of all people mentioned in the book, and a comprehensive index.

My only quibble is with the use of the word 'Tėvynės' in the title: that word in the nominative form as used here means 'homelands' (plural), while the singular form would be 'Tėvynė'.  The mistake could have been avoided by checking with a Lithuanian-speaker.

Having left Scotland in the late 1920s, the Delades settled in Dapto NSW (near Wollongong) where William worked at the Wongawilli coal mine for 26 years; he died in 1978, and Margaret in 1980.  Contacts with other Lithuanians were probably intermittent, although the book includes a photo of William with fellow Scots-Lithuanian Frank Augustus (Pranas Augustaitis) and the Lithuanian chronicle Metraštis No. 1 records Vincas Dailidė as having been a member of the Sydney-based Australian Lithuanian Society.

Roslyn Staib (Margaret and William's granddaughter) and her husband Robert have produced a high-quality publication celebrating their lives which is also a great contribution to the history of early Lithuanian migration to Australia.  Hard copies of the book may be found at the National Library of Australia and the Wollongong Library; the Australian Lithuanian Community Archives also has a CD version of the publication, courtesy of the authors.

William (Vincas) left a brother Kazimieras in Lithuania and descendants of the two brothers have kept in touch, on and off, over the years. A Greatgranddaughter of Kazimieras recently reached out and reestablished that contact, adding further interest to the Dailide family story by sharing a significant collection of family photographs, both from Lithuania and Australia.  Here is one of those images from Australia, with Vincas, Magdalena and their daughter Natalie standing, and their grandchildren below.  

Stamps from Lithuania

When I bought this wrapper online for my stamp collection last year I was primarily interested in the old Lithuanian stamps postmarked at Telšiai, but also intrigued by the package having been sent to a suburb of Hobart in 1924:

The heading 'Spaudiniai' ('Printed matter') suggested that there had been a publication or similar inside the wrapper, and the 12 cents postage suggested that it had been a very light package (less than 50g in weight).  As far as I could tell after a quick internet search the recipient Mrs Elizabeth Lennox was not Lithuanian so I was stumped as to what type of printed matter she would have been receiving.

It was only when I later opened the wrapper that I realised there was a letter written on the inside, and that perhaps there had been little else to this package apart from a clever means of circumventing the Lithuanian postal authorities (the postal rate for an enveloped letter sent overseas at that time started at 60 cents).

The writer W A Riedel was clearly not known to Mrs Lennox but had obtained her address (perhaps she had responded to an advertisement) and was writing to her about his hobby - stamp collecting.  It looks as though stamp collecting may have been her hobby also.  Riedel's letter was not personalised to Mrs Lennox (it starts with "Dear Sir") and looks as though it was a printed reproduction probably used to respond to all enquiries.  In short, he seemed to be offering Russian, Lithuanian and Memel (Klaipėda) stamps to foreign collectors including those in Australia:

So for me it was a double win, not only acquiring the front part of the wrapper but also the unexpected message about a possible Lithuanian-Australian stamp trade inside.  We can only speculate whether Mr Riedel obtained any follow-up business, but it was interesting to see how global the hobby was over 90 years ago.