In Loving Memory

Marta Emīlija (Līcīte) Jakstāne

June 26, 1911 – November 2, 2010

Marta Līcīte, c. 1946

My great aunt passed away last night. She was 99 years old.

She was born on June 13 (O.S.)/June 26 (N.S.), 1911, in Krustpils, Latvia. At the time of her birth, Krustpils was a border town in Vitebsk guberniya in the Russian [...]]]>

My great aunt passed away last night. She was 99 years old.

She was born on June 13 (O.S.)/June 26 (N.S.), 1911, in Krustpils, Latvia. At the time of her birth, Krustpils was a border town in Vitebsk guberniya in the Russian Empire. Across the river was Jēkabpils in Kurland guberniya, now the two towns are unified under one local authority, Jēkabpils. Her parents were Brencis and Jūle (Štelmahere) Līcītis. Her godparents were Vera Namiķe, Marta Jaunzeme and Jānis Štelmahers.

When Marta was three years old, the First World War broke out. When fighting started between Germany and Russia, her family, like many other Latvian families, fled from the advancing front and settled temporarily in the interior of Russia near Rzhev. They lived with a Russian family with the surname Kislev. She learned to speak Russian and enjoyed speaking to the Russians at the market and going to the Orthodox church, even though her family was Lutheran. During this time, Marta had diptheria, and while she was very ill, she said she saw a beautiful white cat, and wanted to play with it. This inspired her to recover.

Marta and her father saw Alexander Kerensky, one of the leaders of the February Revolution and then the provisional government, speak. When the October Revolution took place and the Bolsheviks came to power, her family witnessed the local communists taking the town’s grain stores and burning them in the centre of the town square, calling it “rich peoples’ food”. The communists then gave the people animal feed to eat.

After the war was over, the family returned to their home in Latvia, though turmoil would still last for a few years until the Wars of Independence were over and Latvia established a stable, independent government. Marta’s sister, my grandmother, was born in an independent Latvia in 1919.

Marta attended primary school in Krustpils, earning good grades, excelling especially at German and drawing. She left school after her second year of secondary school and became a seamstress, continuing to live with and help support her parents while her sister went to nursing school in Rīga.

When the Second World War broke out, Marta joined the Red Cross as a nurse’s aide, and helped wounded soldiers alongside her sister. In 1944, when the Soviet front was moving closer, and remembering the first Soviet occupation, the sisters left Latvia, traveling across Eastern Europe to end up in Denmark by the end of the war. In the Displaced Persons camps, Marta met her husband-to-be Jānis Jakstāns, who was from Dobele in western Latvia. I’m not sure if they married in Denmark or upon arrival in Canada.

Marta and her sister traveled to Canada on the SS Samaria in 1949. I’m not sure if Jānis was with them or if he, like my grandfather Aleksandrs, followed along later. They eventually settled in the Port Weller district of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Jānis died of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in the late 1950s, which he had contracted from a blood transfusion after a roof tarring accident. They never had children. Marta continued living in the same house until 1993, when she and my grandmother moved to my family’s town northwest of Toronto.

When I was little, she and I “travelled” all over the world, looking at maps and a globe and choosing exotic locales that we would create adventures about. One we returned to frequently was Belém, Brazil. I will have to go there one day in her memory.

While she became legally blind in her later years, when I was young she made intricate paper flowers that decorated her home and ours. She had a fondness for drawing, especially “mushroom families” – cute little mushrooms with faces that were often personifications of my parents and I.

She had an interest in the work of Axel Munthe, whose villa in Capri my parents and I visited on her behalf when we traveled to Italy six years ago. She kept a statue of a sphinx on her bedside table, as well as a small Hotei (“Laughing Buddha”) figurine that she later passed on to my mother.

Four and a half years ago, Marta broke her hip and moved from the apartment she shared with her sister into a nursing home that was quite a distance from my family’s home, but after a year or so she was able to move to one much closer. Her sister also moved there three years ago.

Over the past few months, she had been getting weaker and weaker. Last night, she passed peacefully, as if just going to sleep. She always loved philosophizing about the world, the ways of the universe and the great beyond, so now she will have all of her questions answered.

She is survived by her sister, niece, nephew-in-law and grand-niece (me).

Today’s prompt: Share a story where a female ancestor showed courage or strength in a difficult situation.

When [...]]]> I know this was yesterday’s blogging prompt, but I don’t have much to say in terms of my female ancestors and newsmaking, since it was my male ancestors who were the newsmakers, but I do on moments of strength.

Today’s prompt: Share a story where a female ancestor showed courage or strength in a difficult situation.

When she was twenty-five years old – the same age that I am now – my grandmother, along with her elder sister, left Latvia in the midst of the Second World War. The war was nearing its end, and it was clear that the Soviets would be victorious. Having experienced the first Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1941, they had no desire to experience it again.

They were nurses with the Red Cross, having initially worked in the hospital in Rīga, and then traveling across Europe. Their journey took them across Europe by many methods, including trains and boats. They were on one of the last ships out of Gdansk, where bombardments were happening regularly and numerous boats were lost.

By war’s end, they found themselves in Copenhagen, Denmark. Displaced persons’ accommodations over the next four years were varied – the manor house “Gurrehus” west of Helsingor, army barracks near Kastrup airport, apartments on Prags Boulevard, even temporary accommodations in Christiansborg Palace.

Initially, displaced persons were not meant to work in the community, but eventually these rules were relaxed. The sisters took jobs as maids in the rich community of Vedbæk, north of Copenhagen. After time, they also secured long-term positions as seamstresses at the fashion house Modepalæet on Østerbrogade in central Copenhagen. During this time, they also met the men who were to become their husbands. My grandfather was the DP leader at Gurrehus. However, they only married in Canada.

In 1949, the opportunity came to emigrate to Canada, and they took it. The sisters boarded the SS Samaria on June 30th, 1949. Documents conflict as to whether this was in Cuxhaven or in Bremerhaven – emigration documents say one, immigration documents the other. They arrived in Quebec City on July 11th, 1949. When my grandmother first set foot on Canadian soil, she was twenty-nine years old. The uncertainty of the years since the war began now over, she and her husband-to-be (who arrived in Canada a month later) were able to pursue life as it should have been before the war interrupted – building a home (literally) and having a family.

My grandmother is now 90 years old, and her sister is 98. I have always admired the strength and courage of these formidable women, and the bravery it took to leave their family and the only home they’d ever known to journey across a continent in the midst of war, and then onwards to a country with a new language and culture to build new lives.

I retraced their steps this past fall, visiting Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Gdansk, and seeing the places that they told me about. I also went back to the village they grew up in and the property where they lived (only the root cellar of their home still exists, there is a new home on the property now). I visited their parents’ graves. It was all an extremely moving experience.

I’ve realized that on this blog I talk a lot [...]]]> I am working on the posts about the All-Russia Census and farm names, but as a warm-up to get in the spirit of the blogging world again, I’m also going to participate in The Accidental Genealogist‘s “Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month”.

I’ve realized that on this blog I talk a lot about my male ancestors, so I hope that by participating in this blogging prompt month that I can highlight some of the women in my family tree, as well as educate about Latvian women throughout history, both “big event” history and home and community life.

Today’s prompt: Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

I can’t say I have a favourite female ancestor, but the one I want to learn more about right now is Ieva Līcīte, one of my great-great-grandmothers. All I know of her so far is that she was living on the Līcīši farm in Sērenes parish in 1866, when she had my great-grandfather, Brencis, out of wedlock. She may have had a second son, Krišjānis – my great-aunt remembers meeting her uncle Krišjānis when she was a little girl, but it is unknown whether he was Brencis’ full brother or half-brother, and if half-brother, then through which parent, since while Brencis’ father might not have been officially recognized on the birth record, they probably did know who it was.

My great-aunt and grandmother do not recall meeting Ieva, their paternal grandmother, so it is possible that she passed away before they were born. I have searched the marriage records for both Seces congregation and Jaunjelgavas congregation (the congregations where people in Sērene parish were most likely to have their life events recorded), but have yet to find any trace of a marriage or death record for Ieva. There are several other nearby congregations that I could check as well, such as Zalve and Sunākste. I will also begin searching for her birth record – chances are good that she was born in Sērenes parish as well, since she lived in “Līcīši”, which is the farm name version of her surname. I would like to learn more about her and her family, since this branch of the family is the one that I know the least about.

Having children out of wedlock was not uncommon in 19th century Latvia – in the records I’ve looked at, there are at least four or five every year, sometimes more. Often there were times when children were conceived out of wedlock, but quick marriages would take place before the child was born. In the time period when German barons and lords still owned most of the land, it was not uncommon for these barons and lords to involve themselves with the young women who lived on their estate. If a pregnancy resulted, the baron or lord would quietly ask one of the young men on the estate to marry the girl, and if he did so, he would receive his own land, and sometimes a position of prestige.

Tomorrow: Photographs!