It is very easy for anyone of Polish descent to be confused about their ancestor’s national identity. When Eastern Europeans began to emigrate in the late 1800’s, Poland did not exist as an independent country. It had been partitioned decades earlier by Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary. So, when our ancestors participated as residents in the U.S. Federal Census in 1900 and 1910, they declared their nationality as Russian, German, or Austrian.
Poland regained autonomy in 1918, upon the conclusion of World War I. As a result, our ancestors could declare their true homeland on the 1920 Census. The Suffield Census for that year registers nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born townspeople as being from Poland. The 1920 record also associated about 20 men, either heads of households or boarders, with the home country of Lithuania. Over the years, this segment of Suffield’s population has not gotten much attention. Is that because we have always assumed that the Lithuanian immigrants were Polish?
Currently, Poland and Lithuania are individual countries, but that has not always been the case. They were unified for nearly 600 years, starting in the late 1300’s. An oversimplified version of this connection is that the two countries merged in a marital agreement in the late 1300s. It was a kingdom with two monarchs. About 200 years later, the union officially became the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia took most of the Commonwealth (all of what is now Lithuania and the northwest part of Poland) when they partitioned Eastern Europe with Prussia and Austria-Hungary in the late 1770s. After World War I, when Poland regained its independence in 1918, so did Lithuania, thus ending the multi-century bond.
It was a pleasure to welcome a couple of newcomers to the Polish Heritage Society (PHS) meeting last month, especially since one of them is of Lithuanian descent. Also, a PHS Facebook group member has shared some history of his Lithuanian great-grandfather, Andrew Goodusky, who purchased property in West Suffield in 1898. I hope this article will prompt others of Lithuanian descent to attend future PHS meetings and join the PHS Facebook group. After all, Poles and Lithuanians are closely related and have many things in common, especially an ongoing discordance with Russia.