Our Colorful Past…

"The Lithuanian Citizens' Society Newsletter" introduced a new monthly section edited by Nancy Binkney starting December 1999 – "The Colorful Past of our Lithuanian Immigrants". Below is an excerpt from this new column.

When our Lithuanian parents or grandparents came to these shores they did not find a land of milk and honey, nor did they find roads paved with gold. What many of our ancestors found instead, after enduring a (mostly) terrible passage via steerage class, was discrimination, hatred, abuse, and hard labor. Typically, the men toiled in the mills at hot, dirty, back-breaking jobs or they mined coal confined underground twelve hours a day, subjected to extreme danger from cave-ins. The women often married young, bore many children, and frequently worked outside the home or turned their homes into boarding houses for the newly arriving immigrants. They labored mightily and made a better life for us, their descendants. The following [anecdote gives] some idea of the early life of our beloved immigrant ancestors.

A Narrow Escape

From John McCloskey comes the following story about his father's journey to America: [Jonas] Mikalauskas, in the early 1900s, made his way to America via steerage class aboard a German vessel out of Hamburg. It was a long journey from his Lithuanian home and family and we can only speculate what mixed emotions the young lad experienced on that trip -- the anticipation of seeing a new world, coupled with the bittersweet memories of a home left behind. But it was a journey that almost never happened.

Back in Lithuania it was customary for Russians to conscript young men to military service. Every week the Russian conscript wagon would scour the villages for able-bodied young men who came of age to serve in the Russian military. Russian soldiers arrived at the family homestead, unceremoniously clipped his hair, and told [Jonas's] mother she had one week to get his affairs in order. This could not have come at a worse time; since [Jonas] was awaiting the arrival of a ticket to America from his sister.

When the conscript wagon came the following week to take [Jonas] away, his passage to America had just arrived. But [Jonas] could do nothing except to leave with the soldiers who came for him. Clutching his ticket close to his heart and torn by his impossible circumstance, [Jonas] climbed aboard the wagon and sadly watched as his village receded into the distance. Little did he know his greatest adventure was about to begin.

The conscript wagon arrived at the German border and was secured on the Lithuanian side by a Russian patrol. To [Jonas's] surprise, many furtive words were exchanged, money changed hands, and before he knew it, [Jonas] was on his way to the port of Hamburg where he boarded the ship to America! A narrow escape, indeed.