Hello
I am trying to find insight into why and how my gt grandparents with their children, including  my gt grandfather  left Vilna in approx 1882 to set up life in England, they were furriers by trade.  Was there persecution at that time in Vilna. How would Furriers? afford to transport  themselves  and seven children to England, was there a certain  route to get them to their destination?
I'm intrigued  by the plight of my ancestors.  If anyone  can point me to any reading/articles/insight I would be very grateful. 
Joanne  Bober, UK
Searching: Bober Vilna

Read about the May Laws of 1882. May Laws - Wikipedia Czar Alexander II (the Reformer Czar) was assassinated (If you ever go to St Petersburg, The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood is worth seeing) and his son Czar Alexander III followed him reversing all of Alexander II's liberal and reform policies. The May Laws and pogroms that followed are the main reason why Jews left the Pale of Settlement  

Phil Goldfarb
Tulsa, OK
phil.goldfarb@... 

I agree with Phil Goldfarb regarding why your ancestors left Vilna when they did, and I commend their perceptiveness, since after the May Laws more laws were issued each years making life for Russian Jews more and more intolerable.

Regarding how they emigrated and how they were able to afford it: furriers were among the most financially successful of Jewish artisans in Russia, and in a comparatively large city like Vilna, there would have been a large market for their products. To emigrate, the family would have been able simply to board the main railroad line that crossed Lithuania in Vilna and ride it to its western terminus in Kybartai, in Kovno Province, on the border with East Prussia. The total journey was about 125 miles but the train made several stops along the way (including Kovno, for example) and so took a few days. From Kybartai they had to cross the Russian - East Prussian border to Eydtkuhnen. This might have been done by train if they had been able to obtain exit passports before leaving, but those were difficult and expensive to acquire, or they might have been smuggled across the border if, like many, they had no exit passports. (Many locals, Jewish and non-Jewish, in the Kybartai area, made their living by smuggling goods and people across the border.) From Kybartai, they traveled by train to an embarkation point such as Hamburg, 4 days by train, the most popular embarkation point for emigrants to the U.S., but they might have traveled further by train to Antwerp, Rotterdam, or other North Sea or Channel ports that gave them a shorter sea route to London. The trip was nowhere near as expensive or grueling as one to the United States. 

Judith Singer
researching CHARNEY and related names in Lithuania

Here is the irony for all...Like I said, Alexander II was the Reformer Czar, also called Alexander the Liberator and The Great Emancipator. His oldest son was Nicholas Alexanderovich who was well educated, intelligent and had the same reform ideas as his father. Unfortunately, before he could become Czar, he died of spinal meningitis at the age of 21 in 1865. When his father was assassinated, his younger brother, Alexander the "spare" became Czar. He reversed all of his father's policies, we had the May Laws, pogroms ensued, and over 2.5 million people left the Pale of Settlement. I would think that many of our relatives, given freedom to become educated, practice their religion, and live where they wanted to live might have stayed in Russia!

Phil Goldfarb
Tulsa, OK
phil.goldfarb@... 

On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 05:35 PM, Judith Singer wrote:

Regarding how they emigrated and how they were able to afford it: furriers were among the most financially successful of Jewish artisans in Russia, and in a comparatively large city like Vilna, there would have been a large market for their products. To emigrate, the family would have been able simply to board the main railroad line that crossed Lithuania in Vilna and ride it to its western terminus in Kybartai, in Kovno Province, on the border with East Prussia. The total journey was about 125 miles but the train made several stops along the way (including Kovno, for example) and so took a few days. From Kybartai they had to cross the Russian - East Prussian border to Eydtkuhnen. 

Why not the port of Libau, the present Liepaja?
--
Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.

Thank you very much, Odeda, Judith and Phil
Such  great insight. I didn't realise the status of furriers and had conflicting thoughts about their path  to England. 
I've just looked at a map and Liepaja does look like a practical option. Searching through shipping  records in England hasn't bought any information  forth but I do know during the war a lot of records were lost, not just transport but personal soldier  records too.
Does anyone know about access to shipping records from the Hamburg, Liepaja etc ? 
Thank you in advance 
Joanne  Bober, UK
Researching Bober, Vilna

My ancestors left Lomza -Suwalki gubernias in NE Poland (on borders with Kovno) between 1865 and 1875 for Northern England and Scotland, likely via Konigsberg, East Prussia, now Kaliningrad. Kybartai was then part of Suwalki Gubernia (and was until WW1). This border was used for smuggling along its length not just at Kybartai, but also at Vishtinetz now Vistytis in particular. 

If you wish to know more, please see works by Professor Ruth Leiserowitz from the East Prussian/Vishtinetz point of view and works by Dr Nick Evans from the University of Hull on seaborne migration from Baltic ports (googling brings these up). 

If you sign up for the IAJGS conference in London in the summer (when registration becomes available in March) you should be able to see Dr Nick Evans who has put in a proposal on Baltic Migration to UK between 1793 and 1914 and also a proposal for Latvian SIG on migration from the Port of Libau. 

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK