Lithuanian emigrant archives in North America and how to use them

Lithuanians who came to North America left paper behind them everywhere: parish registers, society minute books, choir programmes, letters, passports from the 1930s, displaced persons camp records and thousands of photographs with nothing written on the back. A surprising amount of it survived because a few people insisted on keeping it. The result is a small group of emigrant archives, most of them run by volunteers or small staffs, that hold material no national archive ever collected. This page describes the main ones and how to approach them.

Why emigrant archives matter

Lithuanian state archives in Vilnius and Kaunas are the place for church books and civil records from before emigration. They know very little about what happened after a family left. The emigrant archives fill that gap. They hold the records of organisations that existed only abroad, the personal papers of writers, priests, teachers and activists, and the newspapers and bulletins published in exile. For anyone tracing a family who came after the Second World War, they are often the only place where camp records, emigration lists and community membership files survive. The diaspora papers themselves are described on the page about the Lithuanian press abroad.

The main collections

American Lithuanian Cultural Archives, Putnam, Connecticut

Known by its Lithuanian initials as ALKA, this archive grew out of one priest's collecting. Monsignor Pranciškus Juras (Francis Juras) began gathering Lithuanian books and periodicals in 1922 at his parish in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The collection moved more than once before he built a home for it in Putnam, Connecticut, in 1963, beside the convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. In 1973 he handed it to the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Science, which has run it since.

ALKA holds a large library of Lithuanian American books and periodicals, a museum section with paintings, carvings and textiles, and several hundred archival collections: the papers of individuals and the records of parishes, societies and fraternal organisations. Its strength is the older, pre-war emigration of New England and the Catholic organisations of the East Coast.

Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago

The Lithuanian Research and Studies Center was formed in Chicago in 1982 by bringing several older collections under one roof. It works from the Lithuanian Youth Center on South Claremont Avenue, in the Marquette Park area that was the heart of Lithuanian Chicago for decades. It is the largest Lithuanian scholarly archive outside Lithuania.

Its core is the Lithuanian World Archives, which took in the records of displaced persons camps and émigré organisations after the refugees moved from Germany to North America. Separate divisions cover music, medicine, photography, fine art and the history of Soviet repression, and there is a large library. Researchers interested in post-war emigrants, exile politics, scouting or Lithuanian schools will usually find something here.

Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, Chicago

Founded in 1966 by a Chicago businessman of Lithuanian descent, the Balzekas Museum moved in 1986 to a former hospital building at 6500 South Pulaski Road. Besides exhibits of folk art, amber and armour, it keeps a research library with rare books, maps, periodicals and manuscripts, and it runs a genealogy department that helps visitors with family research. It is often the easiest door to knock on for a first question.

Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada, Mississauga

Lithuanian Canadians began planning an archive of their own in the early 1980s. A home was found at Anapilis, the Lithuanian church and community centre in Mississauga, Ontario, and the Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada opened there at the end of that decade. It collects the records of Canadian Lithuanian organisations and parishes, personal papers, photographs and the Canadian Lithuanian press.

Smaller and local collections

Every large Lithuanian parish, club and community chapter kept records, and many still hold them. Parish sacramental registers usually stay with the parish or pass to the diocesan archive when a parish closes. Fraternal benefit societies kept member files. Some university libraries with immigration history collections also hold Lithuanian material, especially newspapers.

How to visit and how to ask

These are small institutions, many run partly by volunteers. A little preparation saves both sides time.

1. Write first. Send a short letter or email with your name, the family or subject you are researching, the dates and places you already know, and what you hope to find. Ask whether the collection is likely to hold it before you travel.
2. Ask about opening hours. Some reading rooms open only on certain days, and some only by appointment.
3. Bring what you have. Copies of naturalisation papers, ship lists, obituaries or a camp registration card give the archivist a name spelled the way the records spell it.
4. Expect Lithuanian. Most material is in Lithuanian, and older files may be in German, Polish or Russian. Bring a dictionary, or a relative who reads the language.
5. Note the spellings. Surnames shift between records: a woman's ending changes with marriage, and English clerks recorded names by ear. Try every version.
6. Ask before copying. Rules on photography and photocopies differ; many archives allow a camera without flash.
7. Leave something behind. If your family has letters, photographs or papers of its own, ask whether the archive would like them or copies of them. Collections like these grew from exactly such gifts.

A useful habit for students is to record the full reference of every file you use: archive, collection name, box and folder. You will need it for footnotes and for finding the item again, and a later researcher following your work will need it too.

For records inside Lithuania, the state archives are listed on the Lithuanian Archives Department site. More guides on heritage and history are collected in the heritage circle and the reference library.