Julia Bird (Brindzaite) - Inconsistencies

Started by Barbara Bird on Tuesday, March 21, 2023
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Julia Brindzaite Bird was my great grandmother. My father and his cousins have told me that her first language was Lithuanian, and we suspect she was brought to the US as a child or young adult. Anita Ernst Daley, an older cousin who know her Grandma Julia best, attended Julia's mother's funeral when she was a child, which is how we learned about her parents and siblings in the US.
There are some inconsistencies around her birth year, and some family rumors that she may be a half sister to her US-born siblings.

From a genealogist who helped us locate her parents' records in Lithuania:
"I finally found Jurgis Brindza's and Karolina Stankevičiūtė's marriage record and I am attaching it here (entry #20). To summarize, they were married on June 22nd, 1889 in the Seirijai Roman Catholic Church, the groom Jurgis being a 25-year-old bachelor from Mankūnėliai folwark belonging to Miroslavas-Nemunaitis parish, son of Martynas Brindza and Rozalija Petrauskaitė, the bride Karolina being of unspecified age from Panemunė village belonging to Liškiava parish, daughter of Paulius Stankevičius and Marijona Lauronytė. Their children Pranciška (1890-1893) and Juozapas (1891-1893) both lived out their short lives in Ginčionys, while Ieva (1893-?) was born in Kaciuliškės. They must have moved after 1893 because I cannot find any other records in Seirijai through 1900. The 1910 U.S. Census states that their son Alexander was born in Pennsylvania, so if we can trust that source, they were already in America by 1899 and were coming back from a trip through the port of New York with their newborn son Alexander (possibly mistakenly listed as a female on the passenger list) in 1901.
Now the question is, how does Julia figure into this family? She seems to have been born before Jurgis's and Karolina's marriage. Jurgis and Karolina are listed as bachelors on the marriage record, so Julia could not have been a child from a previous marriage. It seems more likely that she was an illegitimate child of either parent, or an adopted child. Did she come to Pennsylvania with Jurgis and Karolina before 1900 and left in America with a relative while the parents traveled to Lithuania sometime between 1899 and May 1901? "

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