Re: Zablackas/Pranskietis in Baltimore
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In reply to:
Zablackas/Pranskietis in Baltimore
denise sparks 3/06/11
Denise,
The given name Frank would be Pranas or Prancis^kus in Lithuanian.The surname Pranskietis was likely spelled without the first "i" so it was likely Pransketis.The ending for a woman married to man with this surname would be Pransketiene.The ending for their unmarried daughter would be "-yte" (in older times, i.e., pre-WWI, it might be "-ute"), so it would have been Miss Anele Pransketyte, at least among Lithuanians.When she married Prancis^kus, she became Anele Zablockiene.
There are two different endings to the surname with the root or stem "Zablock-": Zablockas and Zablockis in the online phone book for Lithuania.Lithuanian has two different letters "c", one with a little mark or "birdie" over it (typed "c^" on non-Lithuanian keyboards) that is pronounced "ch" as in the English word "church".The other "c" has no mark and is pronounced "ts" as in "bits".It is never pronounced like the "c" in the English word "cousin."So the surname would be pronounced zah-BLAHTS-skahs.The ending "-ski" is Slavic (Polish, Russian, etc.) rather than Lithuanian.Many Lithuanians used Polish spellings for their names because of the influence of their Polish-speaking priests and major landowners and neighbors.
There is no village named Sudova in present day Lithuania.But there is a village named S^eduva (pronounced sheh-DOO-vah).It is written Shadova in Russian, Szadow in Polish, Schadow in German; also sometimes Shedeva, Sheduva, S^eduvos, S^edova, S^edava.So it appears that Sudova is a partly Russian spelling, but with the initial "s" written without the sound "sh" used in Lithuanian and writte "s^".
The odds are very high that Frank was born not in the city of Kaunas but in the province or gubernia of that name or perhaps in the uyezd (district) of that name.Prior to WWI, Lithuania did not exist.The lands we now know as Lithuania were simply part of the Russian Empire (1795-1917) which was divided into provinces called gubernias which were further divided into districts called uyezds.The reason I say that it is highly unlikely he was from the city of Kaunas is the following:
“According to the Russian census of 1897, the province of Kaunas and 5 districts of the Suwalki and Vilnius provinces (that is Lithuanian majority areas), had a population of 2,676,000, of which 58.3 percent were Lithuanians, 14.6 percent Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, 13.3 percent Jews, 10.3 percent Poles; with Germans, Latvians, tatars and others making up the rest.Of the Lithuanians, 93 percent were peasants, 4 percent city dwellers, 3 percent gentry.Only 14 Lithuanians identified themselves as merchants.
In the early years of the 20th century, the Lithuanians slowly improved their standing; in 1913, of approximately 15,000 merchants and employers of industrial labor, about 4 percent were ethnic Lithuanians (the others were Jews and Poles).Lithuanians owned only 6.5 percent of urban real estate in Lithuania.Lithuanians were overwhelmingly a farming people.
Lithuanian towns were populated by other ethnic groups.In 1897, only 2.1 percent of the population of Vilnius was Lithuanian; in the towns of the Kaunas province 8.9 percent were Lithuanian.Lithuanians constituted only 6.6 percent of the population of the city of Kaunas, 27.8 percent of S^iauliai, 12.1 percent of Panevez^ys, 30.4 percent of Tels^iai, and 17.5 percent of the towns of the Suwalki province.” (From: "Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic", 1918-1940 by Alfonsas Eidintas, Vytautas Z^alys, Edvardas Tuskenis)
For a Lithuanian immigrant from pre-WWI days to say he or she was from Kaunas or Vilnius most likely meant the province or gubernia in the same way one born in Lorain, Ohio might tell someone that he or she was from Ohio rather than tell a place name the listener would not likely know.And like New York, Kaunas or Vilnius was both the name of a city and a province (as well as a district).
John Peters
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Re: Zablackas/Pranskietis in Baltimore
denise sparks 3/07/11