DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English
by Elena Bradūnas-Aglinskas
In 1972 I embarked on a documentary expedition to the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania to see if the Lithuanian immigrants who came to America at the turn of the 19th–20th century remembered any songs from the “old country.” I focused primarily on the town of Shenandoah, where I visited a number of elderly women who had come to America as young girls at the beginning of the 20th century. I also interviewed a few men and some descendants of those pre-World War I immigrants. In that month-long stay, I recorded 250 songs and numerous accounts of life experiences. The songs and reminiscences give us an insight into immigrants’ lives and sentiments in a way that adds color to official historical facts. I feel extremely grateful to my informants who were willing to share their songs and stories. Their words were recorded more than fifty years ago, but their songs and memories reach back more than a hundred years.
The first big wave of Lithuanian immigrants to the USA began in the 1870s and continued up to around 1915 when quotas were imposed. They mostly settled in Pennsylvania, where coal mining was in its heyday, and they were needed as laborers. The town of Shenandoah was one of the first destinations where Lithuanians flocked, and it was even referred to as the “capital of Lithuanians in America,” but others settled in nearby towns as well. They built churches, rectories, and schools, and had their own orchestras, clubs, and saloons where they gathered for cultural and social activities that maintained their language and traditions.
Many of those first immigrants were from rural farms and were illiterate, but they had rich oral traditions. Singing was one of them, and my elderly informants said that when Lithuanians got together, they always sang. Moreover, they sang with such enthusiasm “that the walls and roofs rattled from their singing.” With time, they learned to read and write, and published newspapers and books that were smuggled back to Lithuania, which was then under Russian Czarist rule. From 1864 to 1904, the Russian government, in an attempt to Russify Lithuanians, had forbidden the use of the Latin alphabet for any publications, thus forcing the use of Cyrillic letters and allowing only Russian language education. Young men were forcefully conscripted into the Russian army, and because of this, many chose to emigrate.
At the turn of the century, economic conditions were also hard for large Lithuanian families, and many came to America planning to make some money and then return, buy some land and farm. When Lithuania became independent in 1918, some immigrants returned, but a majority stayed in America.
Life in those Lithuanian settlements continued as long as the coal industry thrived. Eventually, the mines closed, the miners died from black lung disease, and their descendants moved elsewhere. The elderly women I visited were usually living alone or with their daughters who worked in nearby garment factories. They lived in their own homes and did not want to move, even though their children were inviting them to live with them elsewhere.
The singers I met were primarily women in their 80s who had come to Shenandoah around 1910, when they were young women around 20 years of age. Some of them received “ship cards” (boat passage tickets) from their brothers who had come before them. The brothers enticed them by writing glowing reports about America and saying they would earn more than they did working for the manor lords in Lithuania, but the hidden reason was that the young men needed brides.
One of my informants explained that soon after her arrival, her older brother, who ran away from the Russian army recruiters, introduced her to his buddy, “put a bottle on the table” (a traditional matchmaker’s sign of a marriage offer), and explained that the buddy will be her future husband:
“Oh, how I cried that whole night, but there was nothing I could do, so I married him. A couple of months later, my husband sent for his sister, and she married my brother. All these letters were only his way to try to get me to come. I was duped. But so were many other young girls. There were too many young unmarried men here and not enough girls. The Polish, Italian, or Irish would not give them a second look – and, anyway, they couldn’t even talk to each other.” (Anelė Ramyla)
Other men sent for their girls or wives left behind, and the population grew rapidly. In 1910, there were 7,425 Lithuanians in Shenandoah, making up more than one-third of the total population. At first, the Lithuanians identified themselves as “Roman Catholics” since that identity contrasted with other religious groups they had known in Lithuania, such as Jews and Orthodox Russians. Once in America, they gravitated toward the Polish immigrants and initially built churches together with them. In Shenandoah, they joined forces and built St. Casimir Church in 1872, but soon strife set in, and Lithuanians broke away and established their own St. George Church in 1891. It was a very impressive two-steeple church that dominated the town’s skyline, and all my informants were very proud of it.
A parochial school was also established by the Sisters of St. Casimir, a Lithuanian congregation founded in 1907 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of training teachers for Lithuanian parochial schools in America. The nuns taught some subjects in English, but also some in Lithuanian, especially the preparation for First Holy Communion. As one second-generation son told me:
“I knew my prayers only in Lithuanian and had a real problem in the Army where I didn’t know how to go to confession in English.”
Because the first generation of immigrants did not learn English, the children had to speak Lithuanian at home, and, therefore, many second-generation descendants still could speak some Lithuanian.
A good example was Eugene Kalėda, who was 40 when we met in 1972. From childhood, he had difficulty walking and could not run around with other children, so he spent a great deal of time with his grandmother and mother, who had been only five when she came to America. Eugene learned many songs from them. He always loved singing and had written down the words of the songs he liked in notebooks. Some songs he learned from Lithuanian 78 rpm records sold on RCA and Columbia record labels in the 1920s and 30s. He spoke Lithuanian and was very proud of his identity, explaining how important it was for him to celebrate Kūčios at Christmas and to observe other calendrical traditions.
The songs that I recorded were primarily traditional folk songs, although some were literary works. Many were immigrant songs composed in America. Those lyrics described the sad departure from the homeland, the long sail over the ocean, and the harsh conditions found in the new land. One song specifically states:
“America is praised that much work can be found, / But when you see the work, tears do fall.”
A common theme was the desire to return home. Such a motif is often found in wedding songs popular among young brides who, after their wedding in Lithuania, had to go live in their husbands’ households. One such song was sung by Petronė Jurgšėnas: A girl begs her mother not to send her far away. She lives there for a year and two, but the third year she turns herself into a cuckoo and flies back to her mother. She perches in a cherry tree and sings. Her mother walks through the yard waking her sons and tells them to shoot the cuckoo out of the cherry tree. The girl pleads, “Oh mother dearest, I’m not a cuckoo bird, I am your eldest daughter.” Every immigrant woman could easily empathize with the expressed desire to fly back home to visit mother .
Other lyrics ask a bird to fly back to Lithuania and tell the parents about life in America, often contrasting what was left behind to that which is found in the new world. For example:
“In Lithuania the bread is more delicious because it is made from rye, not wheat as in this foreign land. The birds sing more sweetly, and flowers have prettier blossoms. Even the wind is fragrant, the sun – more radiant. Maybe even death would be easier there.”
Almost all my informants said that homesickness was unbearable and that they cursed the day they left Lithuania:
“Oh, how I cried when I first got here. Nothing seemed good, wherever I looked. All I wanted to do was to get back on the boat and go home. For months, all I dreamt were the fields where I used to tend cows, and forests where my sister and I went mushroom picking. I always dreamt about my mother and she would always be crying. Oh, how I wanted to go back!” (Pranė Pikūnas) .
Some songs referenced specific historic events. One was a song about book smuggling during the earlier mentioned Russian ban on Lithuanian books. The song describes how a man carries a heavy load on his back in the dark night with no moon and no stars. He senses danger and tries to see if a Russian is watching. A shot is fired and the innocent man dies. The song ends sarcastically admonishing young Lithuanians – “So there you are, young lads and lassies, such are the happy songs and tales for you.”
Petras Zataveckas recounted how his mother taught him to read when it was forbidden to publish books with Lithuanian letters:
“I started to learn how to read in Lithuania. It was forbidden then to read from Lithuanian books. But mother would sit by the spinning wheel and I, next to her, with a book on my lap, and she would teach me the letters. Whenever the dogs started barking in the yard, I would hide the book in the stack of hay by the back door and then run out into the barn. Mother would go on spinning. We were never caught, but the gendarmes found Lithuanian books in this other family’s home and burned their house down.” .
Another memory from Mikolina Januškevičius captures the sentiment of Lithuanians toward the Czarist rule and forced education in Russian:
“Oh, if I was twenty-five now, and the czars were still in power there, so – just as there are stars in heaven, and I am here on earth – I would do nothing else but shoot those toads [EB: toad = rupūžė, a common Lithuanian curse term expressing hate and disgust]. Every Thursday, we all had to go to church to pray for the Czar and his family. They sang Te Deum Laudamus in his honor and you’d always hear only czari, czari, czari Nikolovich, Nikolovich, Nikolovich… I still remember all their names. They were Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and Olga, and Alexi, the boy. If we didn’t know their names, we would get a beating from the teacher.”
Another song referred to the forced recruitment into the Czar’s army. It tells of a young lad leaving his home, saying goodbye to his neighbors and the birches in the forest. The parents can barely walk from their heavy sorrow. The song ends by saying – “those fancy-buttoned officers sit so high, while our boys stand as if sold into slavery.” .
Mrs. Januškevičius told of an uncle who was conscripted and about the conditions of that forced service:
“I remember when I was a little girl and my uncle came back from the service. He had been away for 20 years and at first, no one recognized him. Some didn’t even have shoes. If their families had some money, they would send them some. But those from poorer families – they had nothing and had to suffer.”
Departure from Lithuania was not without peril. Hired agents guided groups to the German border. Mr. Zataveckas recounted how his mother, with four children, secretly crossed that border:
“It was a moonlit night and we were sneaking along this path like ducks. There were streams we crossed and we got to the border. And there were no Russian guards there, it was only the Germans. And all they were saying was ‘hurry up, hurry up’ – but I didn’t understand the language – to get across before the Russian guards came around. They had orders to go somewhere else, they got paid off. Well, that’s the way we got across.”
When immigrants disembarked on Ellis Island, they had to pass a medical examination, show their documents, and say where they were going. Once allowed to pass, they sometimes were hoodwinked at the train station. Mrs. Januškevičius told of how a newly arrived Lithuanian was approached by a stranger who spoke Lithuanian and claimed to have been sent by relatives. The stranger asked the immigrant for his money, offering to go and purchase the train ticket for him:
“It was raining and the stranger had a big umbrella which he let the immigrant hold for him while he ran to buy the ticket. A half an hour passed and then an hour, several hours, and still the stranger – he did not return. The immigrant realized that he was duped and left stranded.”
Petronė Jurgšėnas gave a vivid account of her first impressions of America:
“We got off in Philadelphia. It was July 4th, I remember. You should have seen it. I really thought I was in heaven. Music, bands playing all night long. Stars shot high and fell all over the city. I said to myself – this is heaven – better than what people had said about America. And then we took the train to Shenandoah. Oh my God, when we got here I thought – this is hell! Everything was black and dirty. You couldn’t see the windows – the curtains were all black. The faces of the men coming home from work – so black you couldn’t recognize them. Oh yes, it was hell, and there were worse times to come.”
Children suffered hard times as well. Petras Zataveckas, who came to America at age 11, recalled that his parents fudged his age so he could start working:
“I was twelve years old the first time I went to the mines. It was so cold down there that I was shivering, I shook from fear as well. It was dark everywhere, pitch black. Sometimes there would be an explosion beneath the mountain and everything would shake, and rats would come running out of the holes. We children used to try to catch and kill them. That was our only game. When I worked in the mines, I barely saw the sun. I would descend early in the morning and return home only after dark. I got fifty cents for the week.”
Mr. Zataveckas was the only elderly man I interviewed who had worked in the mines. Most miners died early from black lung disease, and my informants said that once their husbands started dying around age 50, “then every day they would carry out several coffins from the church, just like dead bees from a beehive.”
A very long ballad sung by Eugene Kalėda from one of his handwritten notebooks tells of a couple that came to the land where “coal mountains stand, and sulfur rivers flow.” The wife is frightened and wants to return to their homeland. She often begs her husband to quit work, but he keeps on working until, finally, he agrees, and on his last day, he goes back to the mine to pick up his tools. She starts packing and joyfully waits for his return. In the evening, a cart, pulled by two mules, stops by their gate, and on it lies her dead husband. She tries to wake him, saying they have to return to their homeland, but also dies from grief. The next morning all their neighbors gather to say goodbye and carry them to the cemetery – everybody’s homeland .
I remember visiting a cemetery where a number of tombstones, all having the same tragic death date, marked the resting place of young men in their twenties and thirties. The inscription stated the birth dates of an Antanas, Jonas, or Juozas and listed the region, the district, the parish, and the village where they had come from. I asked my informant why they bothered to list the details of their birthplace since every chiseled letter had a high cost. She explained –
“We bury the bodies here, but their souls need to know where to return.”
Even though tragedy and hardships were part of their everyday life, group singing bonded Lithuanian immigrants and brought them some joy:
“Oh, you should have seen us when we were all greenhorns! We could sing for days without end. All our sorrows would fly away with the songs. It was just like Lithuania. You’d forget you’re in America.” (Pranė Pikūnas)
Much has changed in that part of Pennsylvania where the first Lithuanian immigrants settled. When I visited in the 1970s, my informants lamented that over time, singing simply “went out of fashion.” The older women sang by themselves or when they visited each other, but their children knew only snippets of a song or two. All the elderly singers explained that the songs brought them much comfort. The songs conjured up memories of the old country and their loved ones.
“When I lie alone, I remember all the songs, hundreds of them. Oh, we had beautiful songs! Now, no one wants to sing anymore… Now the times have changed, and people are completely different.” (Petronė Jurgšėnas)
By now my informants are all gone, and their descendants have scattered far and wide. But some churches and cemeteries stand as markers where those late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrants settled. How long the churches will stand is unknown. St. George Church in Shenandoah was torn down in 2010 (see YouTube entry “St. George’s Lithuanian Church in Shenandoah PA.”). A similar fate may await others .
When I recorded the stories and songs of these early immigrants, Lithuania was still part of the Soviet Union. I promised my informants that once the country was free, I would bring their songs back to the homeland. Twenty years later, in 1992, I deposited the tapes of the songs at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius. In 2022, scholars of the Institute’s Folklore Archives selected 40 songs from my collection and published a compact disk and an accompanying booklet with copious notes and photographs:
Lietuvių dainos JAV, įrašytos Elenos Bradūnaitės (1972)
(Lithuanian Folksongs in the USA Recorded by Elena Bradūnas, 1972)
Compiled by Austė Nakienė, Rūta Žarskienė.
Vilnius: Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, 2022.
And so, as promised, the voices of my singers have found their way back to Lithuania.