The story of a family's journey from Lithuania to the Ayrshire steel works and onward to Wrexham.
 

Facts:

• duvet originated in Lithuania, as did yoghurt
• national flag changed during the Soviet era to show the horse tail down to portray sadness then changed upright in 1990
• family names like Brown, Blue, Miller and Taylor in SCO often indicate Lithuanian heritage
• similarities with Wales include ban on the national language, but punishment was more than the Welsh not
• Both Cymraeg and Lithuania share the same language roots as Indo-European languages and grouped with few others with the same root
• the Lithuanians were the subject of a viscious xenophobic campaign by Keir Hardie, pre-MP days
• Lithuanian has very similarly spelt and pronounced words to Indian Sanskrit, sharing the same root, as neither changed over time as quickly as others hence retaining ancient features
• Lithuanian mythology has Asvieni twin brothers who pull the chariot of the sun god as with the Indian Ashwin twins

Reasons for emigration

Between 1870 and WWI, around 650k Lithuanians left home as economic migrants or fleeing persecution.

As economic migrants this was often facilitated by agents looking for labourers so a lot of peasant farmworkers experiencing poverty took the opportunity; some by other routes. Many were heading to USA and were either dumped on Scottish beaches or duped into being left there after paying the fare to America. Some saw Scotland as a stepping stone. There are accounts of agents making digging actions associated by the Lithuanians as digging soil, instead they were transported underground to mines to dig.

Those fleeing persecution did so as a result of Russification following an uprising against Russian control in 1863 which saw religious discrimination, a ban on Lithuanian language literature or spoken language hence book smuggling became common practice, forced repopulation by Russians and large agricultural estates split into small tenanted farms which also contributed to the number of emigrant farm workers.

I recall an account of my family’s experience and how any men and boys who could be found, family members and workers, especially of landowners, would be lined up and either forced to join the Russian Army or shot on their land. The terror for my family and every individual fleeing to the unknown can never be described.

Whichever reason they had for leaving, the Lithuanians landing at the east coast would have spent days crammed on a boat crossing the North Sea from Scandinavia. From there you saw the Lithuanian Jews head to the Gorbals and the Catholics to the central industrial belt of Scotland with mines (4k+ recorded in Lanarkshire alone in 1914) or to the North Ayrshire steel industry which is where my family took root in the small village of Glengarnock.

Life in Scotland

Once dispersed, they:

• were officially denied their identity being referred to as “Poles”, Russians and Russian Poles so similar to being Welsh or Scottish and referred to as English;
• faced hostility as Catholics in an aggressively Protestant Scotland at that time; think here how  main migrants were Irish, Lithuanian and Italian, all of whom were Catholics, but the Lithuanians were a bit worse because they didn’t speak English and looked different. The Italians were more easily accepted because they often became self-employed shortly after arrival which leads us to another source of hostilityagainst other nationals
• established an independent clergy structure, business, shops, newspapers etc but any good news about the community went unreported as we often see today among other communities#

Socially, Lithuanians were referred to as “drunks” and “trouble” and the timeless classic, they were “taking our jobs”. Officially, the political rhetoric  referred to Scotland as a “dumping ground”, the Lithuanians described as “evil”, and the owners of the Glengarnock site visciously criticised by Keir Hardie shortly before becoming an MP for using “Russian Poles” with their “filthy habits”, bringing “Black Plague” to kill off the native workforce. He had even stooped so low as to refer to the legal position in the US in relation to escaped African slaves being preferable to that in Scotland.

With the popular influencers of the day jumping on that bandwagon, the Lithuanians stood no chance.

My family

My gran, Antanina, known as Annie, married Robert/Bobby, a local boy, who became the black sheep of his family for marrying a Catholic (a “Fenian”), and worse, a “Lett” fenian. They went on to have Marion Syvelnuite, named after Marjana, and John. Marion was my mum who rremained in Ayrshire while John got a £10 ticket to emigrate to Australia in the 50’s, where he had my cousin, David. I, of course, have ended up in Wales with my daughter born here.

Glengarnock was a small village on the edge of a loch with its steel industry and workers houses, “the Rows”. A couple of years ago I had a packed lunch at the waters edge witnessing the natural beauty of the loch in one direction and a large mound of grass and trees behind me that was once the bustling site of industry and a lively community where my gran had played as a child and spent a large part of her life.

Konstantinus Mikeviecz and Marjana Szvwlnuite, lived in those Rows, Long Row, met and married in the local Catholic church in the early 1900s. They then shared a family home there with their five children, one of whom was my grandmother, the only girl, whom I’m partially named after, and a younger sibling who passed away as a child.

When I was a child I would listen to her stories but I never grasped the stories behind them until recently.  Something I picked up from her accounts was the calmness and dignity of her parents, stories of her brothers and friends but also her mum’s anger when her brothers got into trouble and I recall my Gran repeating a couple of expressions her mum would use.

There was always the stigma of being foreigners with this awful reputation the authorities promoted so if there was trouble somewhere, fingers would point to “the Letts” as they also became known. I also remember my Gran telling me how she knew sometimes her brothers hadn’t always been innocent and with one, in particular, there was often a girl involved that led to a fight but she never told her mum everything because her brothers were in enough trouble as it was. A standard family life in many regards and she always seemed happy. On the back of one her photos, she has written that she can be recognised because she is “always smiling”.

When I obtained those photos and family documents a few years ago and made those connections, the trauma most of that community had gone through really hit me. I think especially of Marjana, as no more than a girl who must have been terrified leaving the rural village that was all she’d known, heading to a foreign country through foreign countries, knowing no-one or a word of their languages while barely literate in her own language.

We talk of the challenges faced by the community generally but we overlook the extent of the trauma within that community. If fleeing terror and entering the unknown wasn’t enough, the hostility in the “place of safety”, knowing they would never see home again doubled up that trauma. In Maryjana’s specific case, losing a child, followed by hers and Kostantinus’ ill-health later in life, he having  spent his final months apart from his family in a TB sanatorium, the emotional burden was huge. Of course, there was no trauma-informed approach at the time, trauma wasn’t even a “thing” so these people really were outcasts.

Another of those challenges relates to the impact on the sense of identity. It wasn’t just their nationality and ethnicity denied them, but their own very personal identity.

There are records of Lithuanians having had several names and an account of a Catherine Blue which was her third name by the time she married and acquired it. Before then she was Miss Brown and before that she was known to her family as Kastale Neverauskey. As happens, many of the younger generations wilfully hid their identity by changing their names to get good jobs or to fit in.

The somewhat darker side of this, especially with my great-grandparents’ generation, was they would be “given” names by bosses or immigration authorities. Random names would be imposed and an example is of of a worker in Ayrshire who marked X to sign for his pay and from then on was officially registered as “Joseph Ecks”. Within moments an entirely new name was created.

My family name, Mikeviecz, is a common one and has a lot variations due to Lithuanian language convention but also due to mistranscriptions. So, in the documents I have there are multiple spellings and variants. The name Miskeviecz (as one of its forms) was adapted to McSavich too so you could sound pretty Scottish by the end of it.

My gran’s parents Konstantinus and Marjana, were Stan and Mary, her brothers Juozas, Antanas and Pranciškus/Pranas became Joe, Tony and Frank. My gran, Antanina, became Anne/Annie. This is how I knew her until a few years ago and believed the Anne in my name was in her honour. Antanina is in fact Antonia. As for the family name, this was watered down from Misceviecz to Mickleviecz to Macabeech and McAveech and eventually to Mack so my gran and her brother, Joe, were Annie Mack and Joe Mack.

No-one who hasn’t lived that life can ever get that but it’s that strength they had that makes me proud to be their descendant and to talk about them and their story which we know isn’t unique to them.