The Ivanauskas Brothers
Some families don’t enter the record with a beginning. There is no birth register to open, no parents named in neat handwriting, no first page that explains the rest.
Instead, the Ivanauskas family becomes visible through two brothers — Joseph and Marcelinas Ivanauskas — who appear first not as children but as adults already stepping into the responsibilities that define a life: migration, marriage, work, and family.
Their story doesn’t start where a story usually starts.
It starts where the paper trail begins.
When the Family Appears
The earliest record for this branch belongs to Marcelinas. In 1902, he arrived in America as Marcelinas Ivanauskas — his name intact, still carrying the shape of the language it came from.
Joseph enters the record a few years later through a different doorway: his 1905 marriage, the first confirmed moment where his life becomes legible in documents.
At this stage, the records do not name their parents. They do not clearly reveal whether there were other siblings. What we have, and what we can say with confidence, begins with these two brothers and the lives they built.
Brothers Under One Roof
By 1910, Joseph and Marcelinas were no longer scattered across separate documents. They are placed in the same frame.
The 1910 census shows them living at the same address in Philadelphia — 305 South Third Street — each listed with his own family. Two households, one roof. The kind of arrangement that suggests more than coincidence: a family network built on closeness, practicality, and trust.
Other records echo that closeness. Marriage records place them as witnesses for one another, a small detail that carries weight. To witness is to stand publicly beside someone. To be present. To be named as part of the moment.
It is one of the quiet ways the records tell you: these men were not simply related. They were connected.
The Name That Changed
Marcelinas’s records show another kind of shift — the kind that happens not all at once, but as life reshapes itself in a new country.
After his 1908 marriage to Anna, the census reflects a change: Marcelinas becomes Michael, and the surname shifts to Veneski. The name change is not just a clerical curiosity. It is a marker of adaptation — what happens when language meets paperwork, when a Lithuanian name is folded into American record-keeping, when a family begins negotiating how it will be recognized.
The earlier arrival record holds him as Marcelinas Ivanauskas. Later records show the new form taking hold. The documents don’t tell us why it changed—but they show when it changed, and that timing matters.
Families Built Side by Side
Both brothers married and raised families in Philadelphia.
Joseph married Catharine Ličkūnaite, and their household included children named Anna, Emily, Theresa, and Anthony.
Marcelinas / Michael married Anna Babrovičiūtė, and their family included John, William, Michael, Anna, and Stanley.
These aren’t just names in a list. They are a chorus of a family becoming rooted: children arriving, households growing, years stacking up. And behind the names is the subtle continuity that runs through the story — the brothers moving through the same city at the same time, raising the next generation in parallel.
Work and the Weight of Daily Life
The brothers’ occupations place them in the working bloodstream of early twentieth-century Philadelphia labor tied to the city’s movement and industry.
Joseph appears as a lodginghouse worker connected to a restaurant, and later as a loader at the ship dock.
Marcelinas / Michael appears as a laborer at oil works, and later as a chipper at locomotive works.
The work is not glamorous in the records. It rarely is. But it is steady, physical, and essential. It is the kind of work that explains how families survived, how rent was paid, how meals appeared on tables, how children grew into adulthood within a city that demanded endurance.
Separate Roofs, the Same City
By the 1920 census, the brothers were no longer in the same household. Their paths separate into their own addresses and routines.
Joseph’s records place him at:
514 Lombard Street
1710 South Water Street
1825 South Lee Street
Michael’s records place him at:
1613 Wood Street
8014 Madison Avenue
They moved, and moved again — but they remained in the same city, in the same orbit. Even when the household split, the family did not dissolve.
Both families were tied to St. Casimir’s Lithuanian Catholic Church in Philadelphia, a shared center that would have offered familiarity, community, and language — an anchor that doesn’t always appear explicitly in the records but quietly shapes what a life could feel like.
What the Records Still Don’t Say
There are still silences: their parents’ names are not identified in the records currently in hand, and no additional siblings have yet been clearly proven.
But the absence of those names does not erase what is already visible. Because what the records do show, consistently, is relationship: brothers appearing in the same places, in the same years, tied together by witness lines, shared addresses, and parallel lives.
The Ending That Brings Them Back Together
In the end, the record closes the way it often does — with final dates and a shared place.
Michael died in 1936. Joseph died in 1938.
They are buried together at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.
Even after decades of work, moving streets, raising families, and living under separate roofs, the story brings them back into the same place again.
Two brothers. One family thread.
And finally, one resting ground.
Sources
This story is drawn from a combination of federal records, church records, and civil documentation that trace Joseph and Marcelinas Ivanauskas through their adult lives in Philadelphia:
Passenger arrival record for Marcelinas Ivanauskas, 1902
Marriage record for Joseph Ivanauskas, 1905
Marriage record for Marcelinas Ivanauskas and Anna Babrovičiūtė, 1908
U.S. Federal Census records, 1910–1930
Marriage records identifying Joseph and Marcelinas as witnesses for one another
Philadelphia city directories and address listings
Occupational information drawn from census and directory entries
Burial records for Joseph Ivanauskas (d. 1938) and Marcelinas / Michael Ivanauskas (d. 1936)
Interment information confirming joint burial at Holy Cross Cemetery
Additional records may further clarify earlier generations as research continues.
