Paukstis or Pauksztys?
I found something interesting this week as I was stumbling around trying to find some information on our family tree. I was looking on a page that had a Marriage Index from Pittsburgh Area Newspapers and I found the following listing for my paternal great grandparents:
PAUKSZTYS Korst BRINDZ Julia Pitts Allegheny License 1903-01-07 Pitts Press
It is particularly interesting because I had always known my great-grandfather’s name to be Constant (Konstantas) Bird (Paukstis). I was told that at some point he Americanized his name.
My sister found his gravestone and said that his name was spelled “Constantine Pauksztz†and that he was buried in the poor part of the cemetery (I thought they had carelessly misspelled his name—it would still be misspelled according to my research, but less misspelled).
I have had very little success finding any information by searching Paukstis or Bird, so I decided to try the new spelling and I was able to find the census records which had previously eluded me:
This record shows a Stanley Pauksztys as the head of the household which I thought was odd. It also lists my grandfather and his siblings as children so I am sure this is his record.
As I continued to research, I found some interesting records that at least partially solved the mystery about why he was listed as Stanley on the Census Record. The following are listings of Naturalization records in Western Pennsylvania where a Korst Stanley Pauksztys was a witness (there is a fee to look at each record, so I didn’t pursue that farther):
The listing shows the name of who was being Naturalized and I wonder who these people were—are they friends or relatives?
My best find so far was a petition for Naturalization which included a letter written from his boss. In this paperwork you can clearly see his name written and signed as Korst Stanley Pauksztys multiple times. There may be a slight discrepancy between our records and the birthdate listed on the form (same day, but it looks like a different year). Also, of interest is his place of landing and date of landing which may lead to finding more information on him and hopefully a listing of his parents.
(the next two pictures are the top and bottom of the same page)
And I found this in a similar search, it must be the sign in for the above petition because it lists the date of his petition (oddly the text on my search listed him as from Italy, but Russia is clearly written on the actual document).
Hopefully this opens some doors for research. It looks like the name he preferred to use for legal documents in the US and possibly the name he went by (per letter from his boss) was Korst Stanley Pauksztys.
That naturalization document looks to be a real find. Way to go!
As far as the name, I think it’s not going to be easy to nail it down to “the” correct spelling/name.
Paukstis: There are are many plausible arguments for the multiple spellings. Just because it’s found in an official document doesn’t mean it is the correct spelling. PaukÅ¡tis = bird in Lithuanian.
Possible explanations:
– If he truly signed his name this way (assuming it is his signature), it looks like he adopted the “Pauksztys” spelling.
– Maybe he spelled his name with a ‘z’ and a ‘y’ to make the English version of his name sound like the original Lithuanian version.
– Maybe his name was in the dialect of his region of Lithuania, and so differed slightly somewhat from the standard version.
His wife (Julia Brindza) is buried next to “Stanislawa Paukstiene) in a Lithuanian cemetery, in a plot bought by George Paukstis (according to cemetery records). Both of these assumed relatives used the standard versions of “Paukstis”. So I don’t think we can really know for sure what his original last name was unless we find birth records in Lithuania. That said, maybe he accepted all these variations of his name in the US, and maybe the spelling wasn’t terribly important to him. I’m guessing the sound of the last name was more important to him, since they all sound essentially the same.
As far as the first name, it sounds like he went by Constant (or some variation): That’s the name they put on his tombstone and Anita Daley (Dad’s oldest cousin) was named after him (her middle name is Constance”.
The only thing i’ve seen about “Korst” leads me to believe it’s a German name, and it doesn’t sound Lithuanian. Again, I would tend to believe the living sources, where the name was passed on…His daughter told her own daughter that his name was “Constant”, which could just be an americanization of some variation of that name.
Stanley is a common name for that time period and ethnic group. It could easily have been a first or middle name. He named his second son “Stanley”.
In any case, I’m guessing he went by a variety of similar names, which explains why we find so many variations. I’m guessing we’ll have a hard time knowing precisely what the original family name was unless we find it’s source in Lithuania.
The last document you found is interesting- gives us a lot more knowledge about how his early life as an immigrant. We never knew he had lived in Scranton. Maybe knowing more about his immigration would also help us find/verify his brother George.