Researching Tverkus and Baikauskas in Lithuania

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on June 29, 2010 at 12:06pm

Gloria,
There are several Tverkas/Tverkus in the Rassenai district today, as well as nearby Jurbarkas. The village you mention is Liaubarai, along highway 225, northeast of Rassenai. The nearest town of note is Vosiliskis, which is another 2 miles farther northeast of Rassenai on the same road.

I think it'd be well worth your while to write letters to them, if you haven't done so already. You can find their addresses by looking at www.118.lt; click on the English button in the right corner, select the Residents tab, and search on "Tver". This is a strategy that has worked for many researchers. Write succinctly in English and be sure to include your email address.

Do you know where in Lithuania your Baikauskas family is from? It's not too common a name, and the internet phone directory shows some concentration of the name in the Šilutės region, with Širvintų area coming in second.

Permalink Reply by Gloria Weber Baikauskas on June 30, 2010 at 12:16am

On Petronella's Delaration of Intent, etc, papers she wrote tht Jurgis was from....can't remember the exact spelling, but it is something like Gerdershick. I will have to look it up. I know that the spelling is incorrect. She wrote Liaubarai as Lebare.

The ones in Silute I know. One of them....sister to some, aunt to others, is Laimute' Baikauskaite' ...the runner who won a silver medal in the Seoul Olympics for the then USSR. They found a manuscript that is still unpublished as far as I know when Laima's father died. It was so interesting when I had it translated. It actually managed to reunite Baikauskai who thought, as so many do there, that all their family was dead. Antanas in Siaulai is a cousin to them. He was the first one I met. He thought only his father had children, but he was wrong. So many were separated after the Soviets took over with no passes even to the next village to see family....so they figured they had died. The manuscript was the proof. FYI, Laima lives in the Chicago area now.

I can connect the dots of Baikauskai in most continents in the world.....but until I find more information on Jurgis..I can't connect us to them. Maybe this forum will help me figure it out.

Permalink Reply by Richie C. on June 30, 2010 at 10:45am

Maybe you can give us some dates and places and what you've found already.

Permalink Reply by Gloria Weber Baikauskas on June 30, 2010 at 12:25pm

I found the Declaration of Intent paper from Petronella Tverkute Baikauskas. She said Jurgis immigrated to the US in 1907 from Gerdischik, Lithuania. Told you I hadn't spelled it right. She arrived in the US in 1909. She was born 24 December 1890 in Liaubarai, Lithuania.

Most of the Baikauskas folks in this world seem to have come down from Antanas Baikauskas who lived mostly in Rokiskis. His father was Ignas Baikauskas. Most of the Baikauskai men were freedom fighters. They were at one time royalty, though the name doesn't show up in the Nobility Association records. I found through a friend at the St. Petersburg Genealogy Society....he was the president at the time...a record in Old Polish giving the names of the Baikauskas men at the time who were of the nobility in the Vilnius area. I already know that they originated in Bajka in Bialystok, Poland, which was once a part of Lithuania....and is still a Lithuanian speaking area of Poland. They often used the spelling Baikowski, or Bajkowski because the nobility used Polish. They were sent into the area of Vilnius to do some kind of record keeping for the King of joint Poland/Lithuania in the 1500s. Many of them moved into the Rokiskis area and into Birzai where some still live. They were horrendously persecuted by both the Germans and the Russians because of the freedom fighting thing. In WWII even some of the women were shot on sight on the streets, as well as the men. Many were exiled to Siberia...........some returned.........some didn't.

I will have to look up the dates for Antanas Baikauskas and his father, Ignas. I have them somewhere. I was written up in the Lithuanian magazine published out of Chicago once for all of this research because I reunited so many in that extended family who all thought they were alone in the world.

There are some also in the US who were from the Suvalkia (sp?) area. I haven't worked on this research for a while, and my spelling shows it. Sorry.

Even the LDS folks don't have much microfilmed from Lithuania sadly. I wish they did.

I have wondered how to use the Catholic Church to figure out some of this because the nobility always gave one son to the church. The generations should show in that way. A priest once said he might be able to help me through one of the other Baikauskas families, but he was sent to Siberia to do mission work....and he was killed there.