In this series, I am providing pictures of tombstones from Latvian cemeteries, all with death dates prior to 1945. I do not have any further information on the people mentioned.
Photo taken by me, August 2014. Click to enlarge.
Name: Antons Maurītis, born September 27, 1883; died October 29, 1919
Location: Jūras ielas kapi, Limbaži
Fiftieth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries†to see all of the entries that I have posted.
If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.
November 10, 1917
The bloody civil war is raging. There is news about the fallen and injured, these numbers are huge. Other countries are calling Russia a “[unintelligble – but something not nice]” country, where everything is torn apart and destroyed. One thinks that “Russian” will be a shameful and curse word for everyone for a long time. All of the diplomats from other countries have left Petrograd. It is possible that soon all of the representatives of the country’s culture will leave Russia, for they have nothing to offer these barbarians. Only Wilhelm’s [NB: German Kaiser] military power is longing for Russia and maybe soon they will reap the fruits that the Bolsheviks have sown while repressing the sad, betrayed and shamed country.
Forty-ninth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries†to see all of the entries that I have posted.
If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.
November 1, 1917
Everything is going topsy turvy. Latvian riflemen have returned from the front, arrested their officers, broken open Valmiera church and are holding rallies there. They’ve burned all of the arriving newspapers at the station. Each rumour is more outlandish than the next. Petrograd is fully in the hands of the Bolsheviks. And all of their sheep in the towns. Battles are not happening, the enemy is waiting, when the real civil war will start in Russia, and then he will come and bring order.
This is my Week #39 52 Ancestors post, and it is dedicated to a very recent ancestor of mine, my grandmother Aina Margrieta Līcīte, married name France, who passed away yesterday at the age of 95.
Aina Margrieta (Līcīte) France
October 19, 1919 – October 29, 2014
Passport photo of Aina Līcīte, c. 1947
Aina Margrieta Līcīte was born on October 19, 1919 to parents Brencis Līcītis and Jūle, maiden name Štelmahers. Her older sister, Marta (who passed away four years ago, you can read my memorial post dedicated to her here), was eight years old at the time.
However, the precise place of her birth is shrouded in mystery. All of her later documentation states that she was born in Krustpils, Latvia, and her sister Marta also confirms this. However, given the circumstances of the time period, I have my doubts about the veracity of this statement. First of all, the registry office archives were not able to supply me with her birth record – it did not exist in the otherwise fairly complete (I’m given to understand) registers of Krustpils. Then you must consider that while the First World War ended in 1918, the Russian Civil War and the concurrent Latvian War of Independence, with its multiple opposing armies, were still raging at the time of Aina’s birth. Not only were they still going on in the abstract sense of “somewhere”, they were going on in a very real sense of right around where she is purported to have been born. The Free Latvian forces had taken the town of Krustpils on June 5, 1919, but in October – when Aina was born – they were still battling the Reds in LÄ«vÄni -barely 20 kilometres to the southeast – and the rest of Latgale province.
Given that I know that Aina’s parents and sister were living near Rzhev, Russia, during the First World War, a fact I know both from Marta’s stories and documentary evidence, and the fact that most Latvian First World War refugees did not return until 1920 at the earliest because of the ongoing conflicts, I think it is highly unlikely that my great-grandfather Brencis brought his pregnant wife and young daughter back to their hometown so that their daughter could be born there. I think it is much more likely that Aina was born near Rzhev, and the family returned in 1920-1921. I am currently trying to confirm this with refugee registers.
Why lie about her place of birth? It was not unusual for children to be born outside of Latvia during this time period, so many Latvian children born in that era are listed as being born in Russia. But at the same time, they may have thought that the family would have problems getting their young daughter Latvian citizenship since she was born outside of Latvia. I haven’t ever seen this be a problem, but they may have been worried nonetheless, and thus lied about it. With no documents to contradict them, then they could easily continue telling that story. But I am intent on finding the truth of the matter.
Regardless of her place of birth, Aina grew up in Krustpils, attending school there, where she got average-to-good grades in all subjects. She had top marks for behaviour, but lower ones for paying attention – I know where I get my classroom inattentiveness from then! She also participated in some theatrical productions. In this photo, Aina is in the center of the first row.
Aina graduated from JÄ“kabpils State Gymnasium in 1938. She had “good” or “very good” grades in all subjects. After this completion of high school, she left her family home of Krustpils and moved to RÄ«ga to attend nursing school, which she completed in 1941. Finding employment as a nurse in the midst of war was not a difficult task – and it was through this occupation that she was able to make it out of Latvia. Along with her sister Marta, who was a nurse’s aide, they made it out of Latvia to Poland, and then by ship from Gdansk to Germany and Denmark. When they arrived in the Displaced Persons camps, they did not have everything that they had brought out of Latvia with them – just the backpacks they were carrying. Their other luggage had been lost on a different ship that had been sunk by the Allied forces.
In the Displaced Persons camps in Denmark, probably at Gurrehus, Aina met her future husband Aleksandrs Francis, who was the Latvian leader at the camp, despite only being 25 years old. Eventually the refugees moved to Copenhagen, where Aina worked at as a dressmaker at Modepalæet on Osterbrogade for two years, until the opportunity finally came for the sisters to emigrate to Canada in the summer of 1949.
When Aina arrived in Canada, she had a work contract with the Toronto Hospital and lived in the Nurses’ Residence in Weston. Once this one year contract was over, she worked for the Convalescent Centre at the Weston Sanatorium. In this same year, she married Aleksandrs Francis on May 24, 1950, in Toronto.
A few years after the birth of their daughter in 1951, Aina and Aleksandrs moved to Saint Catherine’s, where they built their own home – scandalously placing their living room in the rear of the home, overlooking their beautiful garden, instead of at the front, where nosy neighbours would have preferred to see it. Aina and Aleksandrs became Canadian citizens in 1957. In addition to family trips to Mexico, the family also acquired a cottage in northern Ontario, where they would spend time in the summer.
Aleksandrs died suddenly in 1983, leaving Aina a widow. It would be another thirty-one years until she would join him in the great beyond.
I was born in 1984, and I have all sorts of memories of my grandmother from my childhood. I remember visiting her in Saint Catherine’s, where we’d play tennis with foam balls in her hallway. I remember going to the German store in Hamilton to buy Central/Eastern European Christmas goodies. I remember sitting on the windowsill of our house up on the hill, waiting and watching for my grandmother’s blue VW Beetle coming up the road, signalling that she and her sister were coming to visit.
When I was nine years old, they moved up from Saint Catherine’s to live in the same town as my parents and I, living just down the street. Marta moved to a nursing home after breaking her hip, and Aina moved there as well a few years later. Marta passed away in 2010. Aina had been getting weaker over the past few years, though this year she did improve substantially for a period of time. The last time I was able to visit, we were even able to take her outside in the wheelchair. But then the end came, and like her sister, she slipped peacefully into the eternal sleep.
Aina is survived by her daughter, son-in-law and granddaugther (me).
“Vediet mani dziedÄdami, Nevediet raudÄdami; Lai iet mana dvÄ“selÄ«te, Pie Dieviņa dziedÄdama.â€
Latvian folksong (daina): “Escort me while singing, not while crying; May my soul go, to God while singing.â€
Time for Week 38 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge! As noted in my first post of this challenge, I am starting with my most ancient known ancestors. And I know, I know, I have some catch-up to do. Working on it!
This week’s ancestor is KarolÄ«ne Matilde Baburs, born December 31, 1867 and died c. 1940. She is my great-great-grandmother, my paternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother.
The first important note – KarolÄ«ne was born on December 31, 1867 according to the Old Style (Julian) calendar that was still in use in the Russian Empire at the time of her birth. According to calendar conversions, this should be January 12, 1868 when the New Style (Gregorian) calendar was adopted after the Russian Revolution. However, KarolÄ«ne’s documents from the interwar era, such as her passport, put her date of birth as January 4, 1869 – a year later than the earlier documents attest. Admittedly, these sorts of mistakes happen fairly regularly, and the name Baburs is sufficiently uncommon that this doesn’t present an issue in her identification.
KarolÄ«ne was born to MÄrtiņš Baburs and Ä’de Jansone in RÄ«ga – the earliest known ancestor I have born in the city. Her parents and paternal grandparents had moved to the city in the year prior to her birth. They are recorded in the 1890s RÄ«ga tax lists in the “worker” social class. KarolÄ«ne was baptized at the RÄ«ga Jesus Church in the Moscow suburb of RÄ«ga, south of the Old Town. The only Baburs mentioned in the 1877 RÄ«ga address book – not, however, a known relative – lived on Moscow Street, the main street of said suburb, so he may be family after all.
KarolÄ«ne married JÄ“kabs LÅ«kins on October 11, 1892 in DaugavgrÄ«va Lutheran Church, north of RÄ«ga, and subsequently moved to DaugavgrÄ«va/BolderÄja with her husband. They had five known children – my great-grandfather Augusts Roberts, Antons, Vera, Olga and Vilis. Her husband JÄ“kabs died in 1929, and I’m not sure where she lived afterwards. She may have continued to live in her home in BolderÄja, or she may have moved to live with one of her children, but I know that child was not my great-grandfather, since she does not appear in the 1935 census for his household (though his mother-in-law KristÄ«ne Å Ä«rs nee Kukurs does). I suppose I can check the census records to see if she appears at the address I know she lived at with her husband.
KarolÄ«ne died c. 1940, but that is only family lore, I do not have her death record. I should acquire it sometime – in fact, I should make a list out of all the death records I am missing for my family, and just go down to the registry office archives and get them all for my records! Of course, this will only work for death records after 1910, but I do have a fair number of those that need to be taken care of. I’m living here in RÄ«ga after all, there’s no excuse not to!
Forty-eighth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries†to see all of the entries that I have posted.
If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.
October 26, 1917
Worse and worse news arrives. Soldiers are doing mindless things, destroying, stealing, burning. The threat of famine is inching closer, there is news from Finland about total famine. Despair is stalking across the land. Unending bands of refugees, who have been turned out from their homes by the fire and violence of war. Everyone is calling for help. Winter and its harshness is at our doorstep. Rallies, meetings, without end. They have broken into the church in CÄ“sis and held their first rally. Words, words, and nothing is being done. There are no results from the promises that the Bolsheviks promised in their speeches, they have fulfilled none of them. There are rumours from Petrograd about pogroms, the fall of the Provisional Government, Kerensky committing suicide. Let’s hope that this is all bringing us towards peace, rather than destruction.
Time for Week 37 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge! As noted in my first post of this challenge, I am starting with my most ancient known ancestors.
This week’s ancestor is Marcis Graumanis, born June 1, 1823 and died December 15, 1873. He is my great-great-great-grandfather by way of my maternal grandfather’s maternal grandmother LÄ«ze Graumane.
Marcis Graumanis was born on June 1, 1823 on Dikļi estate, GrotÅ«zi farm, in northern Latvia. He is the son of JÄnis and Grieta. How do I have a precise birthdate for someone born prior to 1834? Not the usual source (parish registers), if that’s what you’re thinking. No, in this case his birthdate comes from confirmation records – which don’t always survive in this parish, but when they do, they can be invaluable (especially if a family moved from elsewhere – then they can provide a place of birth). He was confirmed in 1841, while living on SkrÄ«veļi farm.
The following year, their great wanderings began – which may or may not have had something to do with JÄnis’ work as a schoolmaster. They moved to Pociems in 1842 and Sigulda in 1849, and somewhere in the interim Marcis married TrÄ«ne (probably Krastiņa) and had a son PÄ“teris (born c. 1848). Either before or after his death that same year, Marcis and his wife and son moved to Stalbe, where my great-great-grandmother LÄ«ze was born in 1855. They left Stalbe in 1857 and moved to LÄde estate, where they would then stay for generations. There are no records of any other children, and while the family appears in the LÄde 1858 revision list on the Gaiļi farm (down the street from where they would eventually come to settle on Lejas-SamÅ¡i farm), PÄ“teris all but disappears after this point.
Wanderings having come to an end, Marcis remained on LÄde estate until the end of his life at the age of 50 of “brain inflammation” on December 15, 1873. He was buried in the Limbaži cemetery, and his place marked with one of the iron crosses that was typical of the time period – and which have a good survival rate into the present day. His burial site is shared by several members of his extended family, most specifically his grandson Vilhelms (the only other family member who is named), but also probably his wife TrÄ«ne, daughter LÄ«ze and son-in-law Ansis.
I have visited this gravesite, and I think it is one of the only ancient family gravesites that I have been to. I have been to some more recent ones, of people who died in the 20th century, but this is the only one from the 19th century. And considering Marcis died 141 years ago, it is pretty remarkable that his grave marker still survives. It may be that this is because the gravesite has still been used in more modern times, for other family members, I’m not sure.
I hope to eventually track down other familial burial sites as well, but this is the oldest one I have so far. Here’s to more in the future!
Forty-seventh installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries†to see all of the entries that I have posted.
If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.
October 4, 1917
German airplanes are flying over us. Anti-aircraft guns are set up not far from us to shoot at them. Today they fired, bombs exploded in the air, so much noise it is terrible. I took all of the children to the basement, wishing that I had wings and could flee to the sea, or hide in the mountains. The Lord sees us – and the Lord’s hand will protect me. It horrifies me, what the soldiers are doing in the churches, they use them for horses, as toilets and as brothels. We have heard from CÄ“sis that the Bolsheviks have decided to hold rallies in the churches. The heart tightens, hearing all of this. The situation of our loved ones is hard. Everything they have seen and heard, we have a letter from an acquaintance who is an officer, who says that big Russia is in its final death throes.
The groves have started to turn yellow, leaves falling to sleep one after another. Days are so short and one cannot buy petroleum for lamps anymore – I’m afraid of the dark!
Time for Week 36 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge! As noted in my first post of this challenge, I am starting with my most ancient known ancestors. Sorry that I’ve been delayed on these posts – I was on vacation, and didn’t have time to schedule them ahead of time! So you’ll see a glut of 52 Ancestors posts as I catch up.
This week’s ancestor is PÄ“teris Celmiņš, born September 9, 1847, died prior to the mid-1930s. He is my great-great-grandfather, my paternal grandfather’s paternal grandfather.
Probably named for his great-grandfather PÄ“teris, this PÄ“teris was born on StampvÄ“veri farm in Vijciems parish to parents KÄrlis Celmiņš and KaÄe Rožlapa. He was the eldest child of the family. He married Marija Radziņa on September 24, 1877 in Lugaži Lutheran Church, north of Vijciems.
Despite the marriage in Lugaži, PÄ“teris and his family continued living in Vijciems on StampvÄ“veri farm, baptizing their children in the TrikÄta Lutheran Church – VoldemÄrs KÄÅ—lis (1878), Janis JÅ«lijs (1882), Emma PaulÄ«ne (1884), Anna KarlÄ«ne (1886), PÄ“teris Eduards (1888, my great-grandfather), Alma Viktorija (1894) and Elza Antonija (1896).
This is unfortunately where my knowledge of him ends. I have not had the opportunity to go searching for death records yet – a bit of a daunting task, given how many Celmiņi there are in the area, and a number of them named PÄ“teris. A register of Vijciems residents that was started in 1875 notes that he died at some point while the register was being utilized (which was into the 1900s, and all of his childrens’ births are listed there), but does not list a year of death, so that isn’t particularly helpful. All I do know is that he was deceased prior to the 1935 census, where his wife Marija is listed as a widow.
So when did he die? This is a mystery for me to solve. Given that he probably died prior to the early 1900s – otherwise he wouldn’t have had that notation in the register – that means he probably died in his 50s, so what was his cause of death? Is it a family trait I should worry about? I guess I will find out when I find the record.
More ancestors coming soon!
Forty-sixth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries†to see all of the entries that I have posted.
New! If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.
September 16, 1917
The time has come, that nothing surprises me anymore. Yesterday, refugees from LÄ“durga arrived at our home. Mrs Pudis and her children and their rescued belongings. We must accept them and take care of them until we can find a place for them. It is impossible to count the crimes and experiences and the whole story of what they have experienced. Now anyone who has a good house and property isn’t safe, the possibility of being called “bourgeois” and being robbed or burned down is great. Bands of thieves and deserters are rampaging across Vidzeme, and there is no protection to speak of anymore. Now we are being destroyed by our own country. Only God knows, how all of this will end. Even our familiar, dear churches are being destroyed, altarpieces turned into toilets.
Not looking at all of the madness, we are still doing very well, even if the current situation is writing harsh and gloomy words on the page of our country’s history, still personally we are not suffering.