3: ŠUGŽDA — Family Summary

by Alan Craig       Download the PDF of this page (4.8 MB)

PART A:

Jonas Šugžda

Jonas has almost no documents to give us the details of his early life, but would have been born around 1869 somewhere in Lithuania. His parents were Jurgis Šugžda and Agota Klimaitė. He is likely to have arrived at Lauckaimis as an adult, as the only other instances of the Šugžda name in the local parish records were for his own children. He was a ‘plot-holder’ (small farmer) in the village when he married Petronėlė Melnikaitytė after she was widowed around 1890–93. He adopted Petronėlė’s only surviving child of her first marriage (Ona, aka ”Annie”); they had six children in Lauckaimis, but only four of these survived. The family fled Lithuania around 1903 and settled in Glebe Street, Bellshill, Lanarkshire, where they lost a daughter, but had two more boys. They then moved to the nearby village of Bothwellhaugh in 1911, but Jonas almost immediately lost a leg in a mining accident. He lived at 13 Park Place, Bothwellhaugh, for the rest of his life, and died there of a heart-attack in September 1941, aged 72 — he had been a widower for more than 11 years.

Petronėlė Melnikaitytė

Petronėlė was born in November 1864 on the Sakalupis Estate, near Lauckaimis; her father, Simonas Melnikaitis, was from Katromyslė (40 km to the south east), and her mother was a local girl, Ona Vidrinskaitė. In 1886, Petronėlė married Pranciškus Simanavičius, an illegitimate farm labourer from Kataučizna, 4 km north of the village. They had three children, but the first two (Juozapas & Silvestras) died in infancy. In 1891, around the time she had her third child (Ona, later known as “Annie”), Pranciškus died, and she soon married Jonas Šugžda (c.1893).

Petronėlė and Jonas had six more children between 1894 and 1902: Jouzas (Joe), Pranciškus, Bronislovas (Barney), Vladislovas; Petronėlė Juzė (my grandmother, aka Sarah); and a previously unknown “Maggie” (Magdalena?). Pranciškus and Vladislovas died as infants. Soon after, Jonas & Petronėlė fled from Lithuania with the five surviving children in tow, and settled in Bellshill, Lanarkshire. It was here that “Maggie” died in 1904, but they had two more boys: John (Johnny, 1904) and Aleksandras (Alex, 1910). They moved to Bothwellhaugh in 1911, but Jonas was injured and they spent the rest of their lives in the company-owned house at 13 Park Place. Petronėlė (also usually known as “Sarah”), died of a stroke in January 1930, aged 65 years.

Surviving children (the siblings)

Ona “Annie” Simanavičiūtė – Ona Zinkevičius, later Dubickas

Annie was born 10 Feb 1891 in Lauckaimis, the only surviving child of her mother’s first marriage. Her mother remarried, and she grew up with her five surviving half siblings who were born between 1894 and 1910, the last two in Scotland. Annie married a Polish/Lithuanian coal miner, Jonas Zinkevičius, in February 1911 at a church wedding at Mossend. She was pregnant with her first child when they moved to Bothwellhaugh that same year, and Matilda (Tillie) was born in December (shortly after her step-father lost his leg). Annie and her husband lived at Nº 2 Store Place, where they had two more children: Jaroslaw (Russell) in April 1913; and Malvina in February 1915.

In 1917, at the height of World War I, Annie’s husband was repatriated to Russia to serve in the Russian army under the terms of a treaty with the British. He died of typhus while still serving with the Red Army in 1921 (probably in the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917). During this period, one of her younger brothers pretended to live at her house so that she wouldn’t be evicted from the company-owned house. She was still living in the house in 1929 when my mother was born there; but, by 1930, she had moved to the Bothwell Park Farm (just south of Bellshill), where her son worked before later going down the mine.

In April 1938, Annie married Willie Dubickas (aka Willie Dobbins) and lived at 60 New Orbison Rows at Bellshill. In 1950, while still living at that address, she visited some of her siblings in New Jersey, and probably her daughter Tillie and son Russell in South Carolina. On her travel documents, she was marked as “stateless”. Annie died of a pulmonary embolism on 10 October 1957 at 23 Croftcot Avenue, Bellshill. She was 66 years old.

Juozas Šugžda – Joseph “Joe” Sugzda

Joe was the first child of Petronėlė’s second marriage, and he was born on 12 December 1894 at Lauckaimis. (We know his birthdate only from his 1942 US draft registration.) He was a coal miner by the time he was 17, working in one of the pits in Bellshill with his father and younger brother Barney.   Joe was old enough in 1917 to be conscripted, either in the British or Russian Army, under the terms of the Anglo-Russian Military Convention — however, he seems to have avoided the choice, unlike his sister Annie’s husband. Instead, he married Euphemia “Phemie” McCaskill in December of that year, and they had four children by 1922 (John, Mary, Sarah and Euphemia).

In August 1922, Joe sailed out of Glasgow aboard the S.S. “Columbia” for New York. He was the first of the family to go to the USA, and this may have been the family’s original intention when they first left Lithuania in 1903. Phemie and the children were left temporarily at 16 Haugh Place, and Joe was to stay with a friend at 1051 Broadway, Bayonne, New Jersey. When his family joined him in April 1923 (sailing on the S.S. “Cameronia”), his address was 35 West 47th Street, Bayonne; the family was to live various places around West 47th until at least 1942. Joe worked at the Standard Oil Co., and he and Phemie had another five children between 1924 and 1932. He died relatively young in December 1952, aged 57, but Phemie lived till April 1978 — she was 82.

Bronislovas (Barney) Šugžda – aka Bernard Sumervial

Barney has always seemed to me to be the most mysterious of the family. We know his birth date and birthplace from a US border crossing card, which he gave as “13 February 1898 at Lauckaimis”. In 1911, aged 15, he was working in a Bellshill colliery as a “hewer” and, like his older brother, somehow avoided conscription (either British or Russian) in World War I. He was a witness at Joe and Phemie’s marriage in 1917, and signed as “Bernard Sugzda”.

Barney arrived in the US by car from Canada at the  Niagara Falls crossing in April 1924, where he gave his name as “Bronislawas Jonas Suczda (now Bernard Sumervial)”, and this is the pseudonym he used thereafter. How he got to Canada is a mystery, but a family story claimed he had ”jumped ship”. Around 1925, he married an English girl, Carrie Carthy, a cotton factory worker from Lancashire who was possibly a cousin to Euphemia McCaskill. In the 1930 census, Barney was living at 339 Avenue A, Bayonne, with Carrie and his younger brother Alex. Barney was a machine operator with the Wire & Cable Co., and was still with the company in 1940 when he was renting at 27 East 46th Street, Bayonne. His US draft registration card in 1942 confirmed he was from the Suvalki region in Lithuania, but had his birthday as the 15th, not 13th. He was still with the Cable Co. and still at 27 East 46th, where he remained until his older sister, Annie, visited in 1950.

Barney and Carrie never had children, and very few records exist for them. They were still living at Bayonne when my mother visited the family at Garwood, New Jersey, in 1970, but were living in Hollywood, Florida when Carrie died in December 1972, aged 82. Barney also died there five-and-a-half years later in May 1978; he was 80.

Petronėlė “Sarah” Juzė Šugždaitė – Petronėlė McKay

My grandmother was the second last of her siblings to be born on Lithuanian soil. In 1927, Annie and Sarah obtained extracts of their Lithuanian birth certificates, so we know she was born on 16 November 1901. The original records for their birth years are now missing from the Vladislovov (Kudirkos Naumiestis) Parish, so we’re lucky to have those extracts. I will detail more on my grandparents in a separate article, but she went to school in Bellshill and Bothwellhaugh before marrying George Brown McKay, a surface railwayman and trade union organiser in 1929. They moved to Govanhill in Glasgow.

Sarah was pregnant with my Mum (Patronele “Pat” Elizabeth) when she married, and delivered her at her sister Annie’s house at Nº 2 Store Place, Bothwellhaugh. From the 1930s, George and Sarah lived at 308 Polmadie Road, Glasgow, where my mother, an only child, grew up. Mum married in 1949, and our family left for Australia the following year.

By 1958, George and Sarah owned a bungalow at 125 Maukinfauld Road, Tollcross, and they lived there for the rest of their lives. George was an active member of the Communist Party, but Sarah, a deeply superstitious woman, seemed to be happy with a domestic life. My mother and her parents became estranged from 1970 (an issue I will discuss in another article), so we did not know till after the event that Sarah had died of stomach cancer in September 1973, aged 71. My Granddad died unexpectedly (perhaps suspiciously) on a Party-funded ‘holiday’ in Bulgaria on or before 12 August 1974. No documentation was ever furnished by the British Embassy in Sophia for his death.

John Šugžda – aka Johnny Shugesda or Sugistaff

Johnny was the first of the siblings to be born in Scotland, and from his birth on 28 May 1904 (and his sister Maggie’s death 4 months earlier), we can determine that the family likely arrived in 1903 from Lithuania. They were living at 7 Bellside Terrace in Glebe Street, and his father was working as a coal miner. Johnny would have gone to school at Bellshill until 1911 when the family moved to Bothwellhaugh. When his brother-in-law, Jonas Zinkevičius, was repatriated and conscripted into the Russian army in 1917, Johnny would have been 16, and too young for military service; however, it is likely he would have been working down the pits from the age of 14.

According to family stories, and consistent with valuation roll listings, Johnny “pretended” to live at his sister Annie’s house at 2 Store Place from 1917. Since her husband had been repatriated to Russia, and died there, Annie would not have been entitled to a colliery-owned rental house, so the family engineered a scam to allow her to stay on. Johnny married Jeanie Hill Wallace in August 1927 when he was 23 years old, the third of his siblings to tie the knot. They had two children (Sadie and Isabella Sugistaff) before Johnny left sometime in 1929 to join his older brothers in Bayonne, New Jersey. Jeanie followed with the children aboard the S.S. “Letita” in December 1929, to join her husband who was then staying with Joe and Phemie at 44 West 15th Street.

Nothing more is known about this couple’s short time in the US. They had gone to stay permanently, but Jeanie and the children returned to Bellshill on the S.S. ”Caledonia” in May 1931. There is no documentation for Johnny’s travel to and from the US, but they had two more children in Bothwellhaugh: Jeanie (1931), and John (1934). By 1935, they were living at 60 New Orbison Rows, Bellshill (where Annie would later live), and had two more children: Andrew (1938), and George (1944). Johnny died at Bellshill in 1974, aged 69; Jeanie died at Carluke in 1989 when she was 81.

Aleksandras Šugžda – aka Alexander Sugzda

Alex was the last born of the Šugžda siblings. He came into the world on 26 February 1910 at 4 Bellgowan Terrace in Glebe Street, Bellshill, but didn’t go to school until the family moved to Bothwellhaugh. His early life is completely unknown to us, and the first public record of him is when he arrived at Ellis Island, aged 18, aboard the S.S. “Caledonia”, in March 1929. He gave his occupation as “miner”, and was heading to his brother Joe at 44 West 15th Street, Bayonne, to live permanently in the USA. A year later, he appeared in the 1930 census staying with Barney and Carrie at 339 Avenue A, Bayonne, a couple of blocks away from Joe’s place. Oddly, he is called “Alexander Sumervial” in that census.

The next few years are blank for us but, about 1939, Alex married Anna Maria Stanis, the daughter of Lithuanian migrants, and they had their first child, Alexander (known to us as Sandy), in November that year. Surprisingly, no record of this family has been found in the 1940 census — but, by 1939, they were living at 341 Third Avenue, Garwood, New Jersey and had three more children: Patricia (1941), John, and Linda (1948).

When I visited this family in 1971 at 341 Third Avenue, Alex had just retired as a forklift driver at the Linden plant of General Motors. My cousin Sandy, who was a decorated US Army sergeant, took me on a trip to South Carolina to meet Tillie and her son Russell, both descendants of Annie. They were a warm and happy family, but at the time I hadn’t started doing family history — there is so much I would have liked to ask them. Alex Sugzda died in July 1971, aged 61. Sandy (62) and his mother, Anna (85), both died in 2002. I hope to be able to add more to this family’s story in the future.

 

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PART B: Our Lithuanian Names

Please note: I do not speak Lithuanian, and have no direct access to any native Lithuanian speakers. All my notes below are from research into the language, and I would be delighted to hear from anyone who finds grammatical or syntactical errors in this article. —Ed.

Before a researcher in Vilnius found a number of extant family records in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, the names we had for our Lithuanian family came from a very small number of documents: two Lithuanian birth certificate extracts (for my grandmother and her half-sister); about a dozen Scottish birth, death and marriage records; just two Scottish census records from 1911 and 1921; and half-a-dozen US immigration records from the 1920s. The spellings across the Scottish records vary greatly, and this is probably for a number of factors: (a) scribal errors by registrars unable to interpret the phonetics as given by informants; (b) the informants giving inaccurate information from lack of knowledge; or (c) the low literacy of the informants.

It must be remembered that even at the turn of the nineteenth century, many surnames had not been fully standardised as they are today. The Lithuanian language was still banned in its homeland when our family left for Scotland around 1903, and it is likely most were educated (if at all) using Russian or Polish. Indeed, family records found in the Lithuanian State Archives were largely written in Russian or Polish (both Slavic languages quite unrelated to Lithuanian). So, spelling variation would be as true for Lithuanians as it was for Scots. Within our Scottish family names, there were a significant range of spellings right up to about World War I—for example: McMeekin is variously given as McMeken, McMechine, McMeeking and McMikan; Hannah gets Haney, Henie, Heny and Hanna; while Flynn was often Flin, Flint, Flinn, or Flynn. Therefore, it should be of no surprise that Lithuanian names would have diverse offerings as well.

Below is a list of records we have of BDMs for my first- and second-generation Lithuanian relatives (where the informant was also a first- or second-generation Lithuanian). This list includes records from both the Scottish National Records Office (marked in purple) and the ones we have from Lithuanian sources (marked in orange):

• Mother, Patronele McKay: birth 1927; marriage 1949.
• Grandmother, Petronėlė “Sarah” Šugždaitė: birth, 1901; marriage 1927. †
• Great-grandmother, Petronėlė “Sarah” Melnikaitytė: birth 1864; 1st marriage 1886; death 1930. ‡
• Great-grandfather, Jonas Šugžda (“John Sugistaff”): death 1941.
• G-g-grandparents, Simonas Melnikaitis & Ona Vidrinskaitė: marriage 1864.
• Granduncle, Pranciškus Šugžda: birth 1896; death 1896.
• Granduncle, Vladislovas Šugžda: birth 1899.
• Granduncle, Joseph Sugzda: marriage 1917.
• Grandaunt, ”Maggie” Šugžda: death 1904.
• Granduncle, John Shugesda: birth, 1904; marriage 1927.
• Granduncle, Alexandra Shugesda (aka Sugzda): birth 1910.
• Great-granduncle, Juozapas Melnikaitis: birth 1867.
• Great-granduncle, Jonas Melnikaitis: birth 1874.
• Half-granduncle, Silvestras Simanavičius: birth 1888.
• Half-granduncle, Juozapas Simanavičius: death 1888.
• Half-grandaunt, Ona “Annie” Simanavičiūtė: birth 1891; 1st marriage 1911; 2nd marriage 1938; death 1957.
• Half first-cousin-1R, Matilda “Tillie” Zinkewicius (aka Fletcher): birth 1911.
• Half first-cousin-1R, Jaroslaw “Russell” Zinkiewicz (aka Fletcher): birth 1913; marriage 1938.
• Half first-cousin-1R, Malvina Zinkewicius: birth 1915; marriage 1937. ⁕

†  “Sarah” died in 1973, but the informant was George McKay.
‡   Petronėlė married Jonas Šugžda between 1890 and 1894, but the record is missing.
⁕  Malvina died in 1962, but the informant was John Whyte.

Working out the spelling

As outlined in the article Lithuanian Language, daughters and wives each traditionally use different forms (Miss and Mrs) of the male ‘root’ name, and this can be particularly confusing when trying to work out who’s who. Now that we have a number of records issued in the Lithuanian language, it has become easier to identify proper spellings for individual family names. The internet has also been particularly useful in finding common forms of these names. Here you can find not only lists of thousands of Lithuanian names but, of course, the personal social media sites of many living Lithuanians, and Wikipedia articles on prominent and historic figures. So, using the naming conventions explained in the article, I have constructed the following table giving the theoretical male, wife and daughter versions of the Lithuanian names in our family tree:

However, once the family reached Scotland, they generally adopted regular English-language conventions. First, almost universally, the family stopped using Lithuanian diacritics—for instance, Šugžda soon became Sugzda and/or Shugesda (even Sugistaff ). Second, wives and daughters began to use only the male version of the family name. My grandmother and her older half-sister (recorded as Petronele Juze Sugsdaite and Annie Samanavicute) are the only ones I found who used something approaching the daughter form of their maiden names (both without diacritics and with spelling changes). Interestingly, my mother signed her name as Patronėlė Craig on her 1950 application to migrate to Australia (note the diacritics!).

My grandmother’s half-sister, Annie, had three children by her first husband, Jonas Zinkevičius — the two daughters were registered as Zinkewicius: no daughter form, no diacritics, and note the introduction of the non-Lithuanian ‘w’ to replace the traditional ‘v’ (the name is actually Zinkevičius, which means ‘son of Zinkevič’ — somewhat like ‘Johnson’ or ‘Williamson’). The family not only Anglicized their surnames, but took on common given names too: ‘Jonas’ became ‘Johnny’; ‘Bronislovis’ became ‘Bernard or Barney’; ’Jaroslav’ became ‘Russell’; ‘Petronėlė’ became ‘Sarah’; and ‘Ona’ became ‘Annie’. Within a few short years, some had dropped their Lithuanian surnames as well: Barney Šugžda became Barney Sumervial; Jaroslaw and Matilda Zinkewicius became Russell and Tillie Fletcher; and Annie’s second husband was Vincas Dubickas, who soon became Willie Dobbins and later William Savage.

Pronunciation guide

The Lithuanian alphabet and pronunciation guide on this site will help you get some idea of how our family names are pronounced; however, it will still be hard to pick up the nuances and inflections of a native speaker. To assist, I’ve made a short list of names with some phonetic guides to help a little more (the stress is in italics):

• Aleksandras = Ah-lehk-sahn-dras
• Dubickas = Du-bits-cus
• Juozas = Yo-ah-zahs (Jospeh)
• Lauckaimis = Lowtz-kay-mis
• Marijampolė = Mahri-yam-po-lay
• Melnikaitytė = Melni-kay-tee-tay
• Petronėlė = Pat-ron-ay-lay
• Stepšys = Step-shees
• Simanavičius = Si-mahnah-vich-us
• Šugžda = Shugz-da (really Shugjz-da, but that’s difficult to express)
• Vidrinskaitė = Vid-rins-kay-tay
• Zinkevičius = Zin-kay-vich-us
• I sveikata = Ee svay-karta (a drinking toast)

Names in the family tree

To preserve some of the history of our family names, I have used the traditional formats and spellings in the family tree for all those who were born in Lithuania. My grandmother was born “Petronėlė Juzė Šugždaitė”, and her birth certificate gives her mother’s maiden name as “Petronėlė Melninkaitytė”. However, we now know that the surname should have been Melnikaitytė and her father was Simonas Melnikaitis (means ‘son of Melnik’ or ‘Miller’s son’), and that is how their names appear in the family tree. When Petronėlė Melnikaitytė died in Scotland in 1930, her mother’s name (i.e. my g-g-grandmother) was recorded as “Ona Widrinskiute”; however, this was an Anglicization of the daughter form Vidrinskaitė and that is how I have recorded her in the family tree. Ona Vidrinskaitė’s father is now known to be Juozapas Vidrinskas, and this fits perfectly with the rule conventions we discussed earlier; however, her mother is Magdalena Venciūtė, so we can refer to the chart and see that her father’s name is likely to be Vencias.

All Lithuanian family members born in Scotland were registered with new forms of these names, and that is generally how they appear in the family tree (e.g. “John Shugesda”). However, Alexandra (“Alex”, the baby of the family) was also registered as “Shugesda”, but used “Sugzda” (no diacritics) for the rest of his life, so this is what I’ve used. Interestingly, Alexandra is a female name, and this is likely to have been a scribal error for the standard male Lithuanian name of Aleksandras.

Annie’s three children by her first husband, Jonas Zinkevičius, were all registered using Anglicized versions in the male form: (i) “Matilda Zinkewicius”; (ii) “Jaroslaw Zinkiewicz”; and (iii) “Malvina Zinkewicius”. Malvina used that version of her maiden name for the rest of her life, but Matilda adopted “Tillie” Fletcher, while Jaroslaw became “Russell” Fletcher. The last two, therefore, appear in the family tree as: (i) Maltilda “Tille” Zincewicius (aka Fletcher); and (ii) Jaroslaw “Russell” Zinkiewicz (aka Fletcher). Tillie married Eugene Moore, so her children are, naturally, named “Moore”; similarly, Malvina married John Whyte. Russell’s children were all registered as “Fletcher” — so, the Zinkevičius name has now passed from the family tree.

The Sugzda/Shugesda/Sugistaff name still seems to be extant in Scotland for the descendants of John Shugesda: Andrew Shugesda married Henrietta Kerr in 1961 at Bellshill; while George Shugesda married Agnes Findlay in 1966 at Dalziel. The online database for ScotlandsPeople (National Records of Scotland) lists 10 births (4 females, 6 males) with the surname “Sugistaff” between 1971 and 2013 in the Bellshill-Motherwell-Shotts districts in North Lanarkshire. Alex Sugzda in New Jersey had four children, including two boys: Alexander Jnr., and John. Their children would bear the name Sugzda, but that will require a further investigation.

Notes on the name Šugžda

Research in Lithuania has turned up very little for the Šugžda name, so we have no background for that family earlier than about 1894. The researcher, who found so much for us on other family branches, commented that apart from the two births we have of Jonas Šugžda’s children in Lauckaimis (1896 and 1899), no other records in the Vladislavov parish include the name. If Jonas had been a child of a local family, you would expect to see the name popping up as cousins, siblings, nephews and nieces, and aunts and uncles were born, died or married—even if the records for some years are missing.

One conclusion you could draw from this absence of the name in the Vladislavov parish is that Jonas might have come from another district or province in Lithuania as an adult, and his family would likely have records in that unknown locality. A search on the Internet gives us hardly any hits for the name Šugžda, the most notable being Gediminas Šugžda, a Lithuanian footballer and later a trainer, who was born in 1968 at Telšiai in northern Lithuania. There are less than a half a dozen others with an Internet profile. So, is this a very rare name? Is it even Lithuanian?

Since our Šugžda family left Lithuania in 1902 as part of a migratory tidal wave (25% of the population in about 20 years), it always seemed probable that others of that name would have emigrated too — and it is well known that families often followed relatives who had left before them. Our family went to Scotland, so my first instinct was to search Scottish records for similarly spelt names; but almost all the ones I have ever found there are known to us (i.e. Jonas’s own descendants). However, there was one interesting variation that may be of interest. In 1911, a Jurgis Shusda was living at an address in Bellshill where our family had lived the year before, and he was a coal miner boarding with a Lithuanian family. However, apart from this possibility, there doesn’t seem to be any other branches of our Šugžda family anywhere in Scotland at any time. Given that many in the Scots-Lithuanian community adopted standard English-language names, they may just be camouflaged in the records — but it is hard to believe that none would ever surface if they had been there.

The next approach was to look for similar names in US records (where the vast majority of the Lithuanian diaspora went), and an early clue came when I discovered the name was sometimes written Szugzda (which is a Polish spelling). Ancestry.com is quite good at throwing up similarly-spelt names, so I conducted a search for that name or similar: and there were dozens! The best results came from immigration records (particularly Ellis Island and the Canadian border), and the US draft registration records for both world wars. Dozens of these documents recorded countries of origin, and often birthplaces, and I soon had plenty of ‘Szugzda’ look-alike names that claimed they were Russian, Polish, German or Lithuanian. Given that before World War I, Lithuania was diplomatically regarded as part of the Polish region of the Russian Empire, I wondered if many of those (like my family) claimed to be Polish or Russian just to be technically correct, even if they were actually Lithuanian.

My next step was to review all the records Ancestry.com had thrown up, and look for ones that specifically mentioned “Lithuania”. Excluding all others (and our own relatives’ records), I discovered 21 unique spellings that could be pronounced similar to ‘shugz-da’ (and all with a claim that the owners were born in Lithuania):

Schugsda, Schugzda, Segsda, Segzda, Shugesda, Shugzda, Sugazda, Sugsda, Sugzda, Sugzdis, Sukzda, Swegzda, Szagsda, Szagsda, Szegsda, Szuegzda, Szugsdas, Szugsdya, Szugsta, Szugzda, Szugzdys and Szuksda.

Most of these recorded multiple uses — and, indeed, our family commonly used two of them (Shugesda and Sugzda). There were, of course, examples of those spellings where the owner claimed only to be ‘Polish’ or ‘Russian’ without a mention of ‘Lithuania’; but I have ignored them here (although many of these could be Lithuanian, but giving a ‘technically correct’ nationality). Many of these records also gave a place of birth, but often the mangled spelling made them impossible to locate on modern maps. However, a few could be traced, and we have these places in Lithuania where some of those ‘Szugzda’ migrants came from:

Alvitas, Bartninkai, Girdiške, Grinkiškis, Kairiškės, Kovno (Kaunas), Liudvinavas, Šakiai, Skaudville, Suvalki, Vilkaviškis, Vilna (Vilnius) and Volkovisk.

Kaunas (then called Kovno) was the most common of these, and that’s only a short distance (70 km / 44 mi) from where our family lived at Lauckaimis. Alvitas and Vilkaviškis are much closer (both 10 km / 6 mi as the crow flies), and Bartninkai (30 km / 18 mi). The most interesting, though, was a Jonas Sugzda who arrived at New York from Lithuania around 1910 and later moved to Chicago, Illinois. He was born in 1889 in Luidvinavas, which is hard by the farm at Katromyslė that my g-g-grandfather Simonas Melnikaitis came from.

Sadly, after all that work, I couldn’t identify a single person in my list that had a demonstrable relationship to our family or the Lithuanian places they are known to have lived in — but the name is certainly Lithuanian, and even those who lived in Polish regions are likely to be from one of the many ethnic Lithuanian communities scattered around northern Poland before the wars.