Joseph Montvila

[Bob Godfrey]

Peter, the search engine on the ET passenger database comes up with no other names associated with Lithuania.

The route from Lithuania to England was most often from a Baltic port like Libau in Latvia to one of our East Coast ports like Hull or Grimsby, then by rail to the final destination. It was often cheaper to keep the sea route as short as possible, but the United Shipping Company also offered passage from Libau direct to Hay’s Wharf or Millwall Docks in london. The vessels involved were many and various, including timber and cattle boats, and conditions in steerage were uncomfortable at best and unsanitory at worst.

 

[kookutis]

Did you know that one of the 3 priests on board was a catholic priest Juozapas Montvila from Lithuania. He was 27 years old when he became one of the victims of "Titanic". He was a pupil of Marijampolė; (some town of Lithuania) gymnasium, then studied at the seminary of Seinai (Sejny). He had his priest duties in towns like Seinai (Sejny), Lipskas (Lipsk), Liubava (Lubawa) (all three are now in Poland's teritory). He collaborated with several Lithuanian newspapers. Never seen him mentioned in any of the passengers list.

 

[Ioannis Georgiou]

Yes, he was on board. The Board of Trade Passenger List have it under the name Mantvila, Joseph so possibly that is the reason you was not able to find him.
Here is a short biography
https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-biography/juozas-montvila.html

 

[Encyclopedia Titanica]

Juozas Montvila : Titanic Victim

Biography of Juozas (Joseph) Montvila : Lithuanian priest and Titanic victim

www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

 

[Tbelies]

would very much like to hear about my Uncle Father juozas Montvila who was lost on titanic. He was punished by Soviet government which took over Lithuanian by force. Much went on after that. Father did a definant act of Baptizing a child into the catholic faith. The Russian's found out about Father Juozas defying the rule they had put down. He was fined and punished. Sent to a Baltic area by the shore where it was terrible climate . Mostly damp and wet. he became ill. He was not permitted to do his priestly duties. At that time his brother was very home sick for Lithuania. Brother Peter immigrated to America in 1907. Peter was second child born to Kazys and Magdalena, there were 8 more children in family. The home was in NEDNDRISKIU NEAR CITY Of MARIJAMPOLE. Father Juozas was writing to his brother to stay put as Lithuania was in turmoil. War could brake out. Stay in America. I have a hard time reading my father's book "KAI GRIZTA PRAEITIS" written in 1977 in Memorial to his brother Priest. If you can red modern Lithuanian you can get the whole picture of his life in Lithuania then. I and my older sister are only surviving Nieces left alive now. Waiting to hear in our live time of the canonisation of our Uncle.

 

[Seabreeze11968]

I visited this church and spoke to a priest there in 1997.He knew of my grandfather, Petras Montvilla, and told me he heard the story from the older priests that Father Jouzas was expected to join them in Worcester. You can see from St. Casimir's parish history, this is true."The next pastor, Rev. Vincent Bukaveckas, celebrated his first Mass at St. Casimir's Church on December 6.  He sold parish property on Clarkson Street for $3000.  This decreased the parish debt to $26,000.  He invited a Capuchin missionary, Fr. Casimir, to give missions.  This weakened All Saints Church.  He invited Rev. Joseph Montvila to be curate.  Unfortunately, he died while crossing the Atlantic on the Titanic." ... Provided by Marianne Belies-Klepacki, grand niece of Father Jouzas and sister to Steven Belies.

 

[Seabreeze11968]

Montvilai the last 1,000 Years contains further information about my great uncle Father Jouzas Montvila. It also includes his brother, my grandfather, who invited him to America, Petras Montvila of Brooklyn, NY. The book was researched for 10 years in the archives in Vilnius, Lithuania by Ona Milda Stonkukeviene - Montvilaite.

 

[Marianne K]

There were four passengers from Lithuania, I have been told and a book about them should be arriving soon to my mother, a niece of Father Jouzas Montvila. She was interviewed for the book. Two other passengers were Lithuanian Jews. Before World War II there were about 100,000 Lithuanian Jews living in the capital of Vilnius. The sea route to England was rough and my great uncle, Jouzas Montvila, had a difficult time with sea sickness. That is why he took the Titanic, to hope he would have less problems with sea sickness. He stayed with a cousin at a London parish, who was also a priest, I believe his name was Matulaitis, and said mass there, while he was waiting to go to America. It has been said in my family that he had a ticket for a different boat to America, but the parishioners took up a collection and gave him enough money to be able to take the larger boat. Sadly, he never arrived to America. My grandfather wrote and privately published a book when he was 90 to commemorate his brother. My grandfather has a copy of the the telegram he received about the Titanic, in his book, along with some of his brother's drawings and letters. Yes, my great uncle was in trouble with the presiding authorities for practicing as a priest. Priests were not allowed to baptized or give the sacraments. However, Father Jouzas continued to act as a priest and someone turned him into the authorities. I believe it was my great uncle's cousin, the priest in London who applied to the Vatican for the beatification process, for Father Jouzas Montvila. My great uncle knew he would never be allowed to fulfill his priestly duties in Lithuania, so he was going to a parish in Massachusetts. St. George Lithuanian Church, 36 St. George Avenue
Norwood, MA,founded in 1912, had a priest, William Wolkovich-Valkavicius who wrote a book "Lithuanian Catholics in America" The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1997. He knew my grandfather and told me that he is in this book along with Jouzas Montvila. He told me that the priests in Massachusetts were waiting for Jouzas, when the tragedy with the Titanic occurred. Rev. Vincent Bukaveckas invited Rev. Joseph Montvila to be curate.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze11s0ef/church/history.htm

Here is the book about the four Lithuanians on the Titanic:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=lt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lietuviai.ca%2F

 

[Seabreeze11968]

This is a 10 minute video about the newest book written about the four Lithuanians on the Titanic. There is footage of the Titanic in the video and pictures of the discovery of it on the ocean floor.  

 

[Intrigues01]

I visited and stayed with his nephew Kun/Father K Montvilia, we wrote to each other for many years. He was the parish priest and knew my family Baron Zlatarinskas who had 2 estates near Vistytis. I sent him money and gifts for many years. Before he passed on, he sent me a picture of his uncle and the 2 other priests with the titanic behind then. I still have many books he signed to Baron Zlatarinskas as memories of our friendship. He told me stores of his uncle, that I related to our museum here in Chicago. He was a good man.Mark Zlatarinskas GoldenI visited and stayed with his nephew Kun/Father K Montvilia, we wrote to each other for many years. He was the parish priest and knew my family Baron Zlatarinskas who had 2 estates near Vistytis. I sent him money and gifts for many years. Before he passed on, he sent me a picture of his uncle and the 2 other priests with the titanic behind then. I still have many books he signed to Baron Zlatarinskas as memories of our friendship. He told me stores of his uncle, that I related to our museum here in Chicago. He was a good man.Mark Zlatarinskas Golden

 

[Intrigues01]

I am a decendent of the first Lithuanian to be a priest in the U.S and created the first Lithuanian School in the country Father Juozas Zlotozinskas 1891

 

[Seabreeze11968]

One of my great uncle, Father Jouzas Montvila's bags from the Titanic was found and raised to the surface according to a story in  LT (LIthuanian) News, dated April 9, 2012, a few days before the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  The RMS Titanic sank one-hundred years ago, and has remained a fixture of curiosity and study ever since. Over the last century oceanography has advanced a great deal, and several research expeditions have gone down to the wreck to study it, sometimes managing to bring items back up from the depths. Last week, one such story broke about a rare Lithuanian book being salvaged from the shipwreck. Lithuanians on the Titanic? Indeed.Juozas Montvila was born in Gudinė in 1885 and ordained in 1908, became a vicar in Lipskas, but was caught ministering to the Uniates, a religious group “proscribed” by Czarist Russia. His sentence removed his vicarage and forbade him from becoming a pastor. He wrote and illustrated for several newspapers in Vilnius. An appeal to the sentence was not forthcoming, so he prepared to emigrate to the United States, where he had family, so that he could resume his pastoral calling. He traveled to England and from there boarded the Titanic and stayed with the Second Class passengers. After the ship struck the iceberg, Montvila, along with two other Catholic priests, stayed on board to console doomed passengers who couldn't make it to the life boats. Montvila was 27 in 1912.The author of the book in Montvila's possession was also noteworthy. Antanas Juška (1819-1880) was a priest and folklorist who collected several important academic works, including a dictionary of the Lithuanian language and several large compilations of Lithuanian songs. The book of songs that made its way onto the Titanic was titled “Dictionary” and after some delays and hassles (owing to a Czarist ban on the publication of Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet) the book was printed in a very limited run in 1879 without permission to circulate it in Lithuania. The book passed through multiple hands until it reached Montvila, who suggested taking a copy to the United States, raising money to print a lot of copies, and then bring them back to Lithuania.Juška's contributions to the study of Lithuania's cultural past were many, and much was lost in Eastern Europe as a result of the two World Wars and Soviet occupation. This finding of this copy of a rare 19th Century Lithuanian book, written before World War I and the Soviet Revolution, is definitely a noteworthy find. Links:

 

[Seabreeze11968]

Here is another story about how my great uncle, Father Jouzas Montvila, came to carry the rare Lithuanian song book from 1879 untitled "Dictionary" according the The Lithuanian Tribune, in the English language. The destiny of folklorist Antanas Juška’s book, which is considered to be a bibliographical rarity, is coming to light. Museologists think that the book, which sank along with „Titanic“ a hundred years ago in the depths of Atlantic Ocean, is now among the things that were raised from the ship, announces ... referring to LTV.Unbelievable story begins in 1879 when Kazan council decided to publish Lithuanian folklorist A. Juška’s book “Dictionary”. The songbook “Dictionary” was published with a delay and in a very small printing, only for the means of science, without the right to circulate in Lithuania.A. Juška, while lying in his deathbed, asked his brother to carry the book back to Lithuania to his song queen Rozalija Cvirkienė. It is considered, that a few years later the book actually came to Lithuania and traveled from hands to hands.Juozas Montvila suggested multiplying the songbook.“He said: “Aunt, be so good to borrow me this book. I will go to America, collect some money from the Lithuanian emigrants and we’ll publish thousands of copies and will carry them back to Lithuania to circulate,” – told Director of J. Juška Museum Arūnas Sniečkus.In April 1912, priest J. Montvila prepared for the journey to America and boarded the “Titanic”. Along with other Lithuanian publications he carried A. Juška’s first songbook.A hundred years passed after the catastrophe of the “Titanic” and a message, saying that there is a bag with Lithuanian press and A. Juška book among the things raised from “Titanic”, reaches the museologists.The manager of A. Juška Museum dreams to see this book one day, but doubts it will be bought back.„First of all, this book is wanted by somewhat thousand collectors, therefore, the worth of it grows. Secondly, if that book is really from A. Juška‘s hands, it is already a legend, and the worth grows even more. Along with that, count in the cost of raising it from the “Titanic,” – said A. Sniečkus.Translated by Asta Kurulytė

 

[Seabreeze11968]

Here is a bibliography of the author of the rare Lithuanian book, Father Jouzas was carrying to America. He had planned to raise money from Lithuanian immigrants in America, to produce many copies of the collection of Lithuanian folksongs he titled "Dictionary." Antanas JUŠKA (Juškevičius) – 1819-1880. Llexicographer and folklorist born in Daujotai, county of Kaunas on June 4, 1819. Graduating from the Vilnius Theological Seminary, he wa; ordained in 1843, and served as curate (and pastor in several parishes, the longest in Veliuona and Alsėdžiai. He died on Oct. 20, 1880 in Kazan', Russia where he is buried, his gravestone being inscribed Antonius Juszkiewicz Letuviensis. Although he never for mally studied philology or ethnology, he nevertheless distinguished himself in both fields.Rev. Juška was the author of a dictionary of the Lithuanian language published by the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg. Three fascicles 'of the work entitled Litovskii slovar' were published posthumously in 1897, 1904 and 1922, comprising material up to the word kaštuotis. The rest remained in manuscript form (see Dictionaries). The work comprises some 70,000 words, including many, which did not appear in previously published dictionaries. He gathered words from the living language spoken in those districts where he lived, especially Veliuona and Vilkija. To illustrate usage he included whole phrases. The author translated Lithuanian words into Polish (the letters M, T, 0, R, U, V, Z, 2 also into Latvian) while his brother Jonas Juška provided translations into Russian. Initially the work of preparing the dictionary for publication was undertaken by Jonas Juka and later by a number of other philologists, Jagic, Fortunatov, Vytautas Juška (the son of Jonas Juška), Jablonskis, Būga and Šlapelis. The editors checked the text and changed some details, but the text remained basically unaltered. Since written Standard Lithuanian in Lithuania Major was not yet stabilized at that time, the dictionary's accentuation, phonology, and morphology were based on the dialect of the author's birthplace, but with some admixture of the other dialects. The dictionary is especially valuable for its inclusion of unfamiliar words and their forms, and for its inclusion of expressions from popular speech.Rev. Juška also wrote three unpublished dictionaries, Polish-Lithuanian, Latvian-Lithuanian-Polish, and Lithuanian-Polish. In 1863 he publishedAbecela arba Lementerius (Primer) for children, where he used the new spelling (e.g., č and š in place of cs and sz).Another important work by Juška was a collection of Lithuanian songs. He wrote down about 7,000 folk songs, some 5,000 of them from the district of Veliuona. The first collection of 33 songs and their Russian translation was published under the name of Litovskie narodnye pesni (Lithuanian Folksongs) in St. Petersburg in 1867. Working on the publication of his extensive collection of songs, Rev. Juška in 1879 went to Kazan’, where his brother Jonas lived. Since the Russian administration had forbidden the publication of Lithuanian books employing the Latin alphabet, Professor Baudouin de Courtenay of the University of Kazan' obtained permission to use Lithuanian orthography in publication of the songs. Between1880-82 three volumes of the work Lietuviškos dajnos (Lithuanian Songs) were published,, comprising 1,586 songs. 1883 saw the publication ofLietuviškos svotbinės dajnos (Lithuanian Wedding Songs), containing 1,111 songs. In 1880 Antanas Juška also published Svotbinė rėda, a book of Lithuanian wedding customs. The latter was translated into German, Polish and in abbreviated form, into Russian. Melodies of folksongs written down in 1852 were published in Cracow in 1900 as Melodje ludowe litewskie (Melodies of Lithuanian Folks'ongs), edited by Z. Noskowski and Baudouin de Courtenay. In 1954-55 in Vilnius these works saw second editions in which the original text was reproduced photographically, along with a modern transcription. The new edition of Lithuanian Songs (3 volumes) contains 1,569 s'ongs, while that of Lithuanian Wedding Songs (2 volumes) contains 1,100 songs and wedding customs. About 3,000 songs collected by Juska, but never published, disappeared during World War I.The songs collected by Rev. Juška are remarkable for variety of themes and for his novel method of writing down and classifying the songs. He was the first Lithuanian to record the names of the singers, giving their social conditions and the occasion on which each song was sung. He wrote down the songs in dialect, without changes or omissions, and he classified some of the songs according to contents. These anthologies are especially valuable in the study of Lithuanian folklore.Bibl.: K. Jaunius, "Apie kun. A. Juškos dainų kalbą," Lietuvių Tauta, I, Vilnius, 1910; J. Tumas, Lietuvių literatūra rusų raidėmis ir broliai Juškos-Juškevičiai, Kaunas, 1924; J. Balys, "A Short Review of the Collection of Lithuanian Folklore," Tautosakos Darbai, 1, Kaunas, 1935; P. Jonikas,Lietuvių kalbos istorija, Chicago, 1952; B. Tolutienė, "Antanas Juška-leksikografas." Literatūra ir kalba, V, Vilnius 1961: V. Biržiška,Aleksandrynas, III, Chicago, 1965.Text from the ENCYCLOPEDIA LITUANICA I-VI.  Boston, 1970-1978

 

[Seabreeze11968]

According to Vikipedija the faithful in Lithuania have asked the Church hierarchy to initiate the beatification process for Father Jouzas. If Father Jouzas was to be accepted as beatified by the Church, I believe he would be titled The Blessed Father Jouzas Montvila.This is a Google translator, translation of the reference notes on the Vikipedija website:"Lithuanian parish church in London memorial unveiled a memorial plaque. Lithuania asked the faithful of the Church hierarchy to startasking for the beatification process. Created by sculptor Peter Gintalas wall medal Fr. Joseph Montvila memory feats." years ago the Lithuanian church in London, built a plaque and placed it on a monument to memorialize the passing of Father Jouzas on the Titanic. He stayed with his cousin (Matulaitis?), who was a priest and/or a bishop at that London parish, to recuperate from the journey by ship he took to England. He had much sea sickness on that journey. In my family, I was told he did not originally have a ticket for the Titanic. However, over the time he was saying mass at the church in London, the parishioners grew fond of him. When he was getting ready to leave, they took up a collection so that he could upgrade to a second class passenger ticket on the Titanic, in the hopes he would not be so sea sick.Also, the round metal sculpture referred to above, was commissioned by his brother Andrius, using the money that the Titanic owners sent to compensate his father and mother in Lithuania, for the loss of their eldest son.