СЕМЬЯ СМЫКОВСКИХ.

Иосиф Смыковский (умер около 1908) женился на Агнешке Шкуропацкой (род.1855, ум.1926). У них было 13 детей: 11 мальчиков и 2 девочки.

По памяти, дети были:

Адам -

Петр - у которого было 3 дочери: Поля, Мария и Антония.

Франк - предположительно уехал в Америку в 1925.

Винцент - уехал во Францию, потом обратно в Россию, у него было 3 дочери и 2 сына.

Иван (John) - неженат, умер в Сиднее, Австралия.

Павел (Paul) - неженат, умер в Талли, Куинсланд, Австралия.

Лукаш Иосифович Смыковский - 13 ребенок, родился в 1900 и умер в Брисбане в 1984.

Франк переехал в Канаду и его следы затерялись. Он работал на заводе Форд в Детройте, США.

Семья жила в Гомельской провинции в Белоруссии, у них были польские паспорта и она были католиками.

Агнешка была из польского дворянства, родственник был польским генералом.

Они постоянно искали место для эмиграции из России. Бабушка часто рассказывала о списках и о том, что запрещалось говорить по-польски и ходить в костел.

В начале 20 века два старших брата приехали в Сидней, где земля продавалась по одному паунду за акр. Но страна им не понравилась, т.к. чувствовали они себя на конце света. Они вернулись в Россию и после смерти отца продали его дом и землю, а в 1909 году всей семьей переехали в Бразилию, где купили плантацию кофе.

Бизнес не удался, климат был тяжелым, многие страдали от лихорадки, один из братьев умер и был похоронен в Бразилии.

Они продали плантацию и переселились в Лондон, где прожили около полгода в 1911. Отец ходил в школу и говорил на английском.

В то время Российское правительство раздавало земельные наделы колонистам Дальнего Востока и Сибири. Русско-японская война доказала, что Дальний Восток России мало населен.

Семья Смыковских вернулась в Россию в 1911 и переехала в Сибирь и получила надел земли в Рогачевке, которая была примерно на полпути от Хабаровска до Благовещенска.

Дядя Винцент и его семья вернулись в Россию (СССР) после войны. У них были кое-какие сбережения т.к. у них был сельскохозяйственный бизнес в Лионе (Франция). На границе у них все отобрали и послали обратно в Рогачевку, откуда они уехали в 1922. Там дядя Винцент и умер со своей женой и младшим сыном Леоном, остались лишь две дочки который вышли замуж.

Старшая дочь вышла замуж за поляка во Франции и не присоединилась к семье во время их возвращения в Россию. Папа нашел их во время поездки во Францию в 1958 (и повторно в 1969).

Со старшим сыном - Петром Смыковским - мы встретились во время моей поездки в Россию в 1974. Он служил во французской армии, а потом вернулся на ферму помогать отцу, был учителем во Франции. Во время войны на ферме на них работали украинские военнопленные. На одной из пленных женился Петр и после войны переехал с ней в Донецк.

Мы встретились с тремя дочерями Петра (моими кузинами): Полей, Марией и Альбиной. Они жили в Минске недалеко от своей родины (около 20 миль южнее Минска).

Многие родственники эмигрировали во Францию, работали на заводах вокруг Лиона. Гулевичи и Шкуропацкие поселились в Австралии в Эйр и

Маккэй (Ayr and Mackay).

Тетя Аня, которая была на пару лет старше папы, переселилась со своей матерью и вышла замуж за болгарина Димова. У них есть дочь Вера и сын Том,

живут они сейчас в Австралии в Таунсвиле.

Во время поездки в Америку в 1958 папа пытался найти своих племянников (детей Франка?) - мальчика и девочку.

Хотя фамилия Смыковский достаточно редкая, папа нашел несколько Смыковских в телефонных справочниках городов, которые он посетил,

но никто из этих Смыковских не был родом из Гомельщины.

Вера рассказывала, что во время войны в Таунсвиле про Смыковских расспрашивал американский солдат, но они так и не встретились.

Оригинал.

SMYKOWSKY FAMILY.

Joseph Smykowsky (died about 1908) married Agnes Schurapadski (born 1855 and died 1926). They had 13 children; 11 boys and 2 girls.

From memory, the children were:

Adam -

Peter- had three daughters: Polia, Maria and Antonia

Frank – possibly went to the USA in 1925

Vincent – went to France then back to Russia, and had two sons and three daughters.

John – unmarried and died in Sydney, Australia.

Paul - unmarried and died in Tully, Queensland Australia.

LUCAS IOSOFOVITCH SMYKOWSKY, the 13^th child was born in 1900 and died in Brisbane in 1984.

Frank went to Canada but could not be traced. He worked at the Ford Factory in Detroit, USA.

The family lived in Gomelskia (Guterna) Province in White Russia, had Polish passports and were staunch Roman Catholics.

Agnes came from the Polish nobility, a relative was a Polish general.

Apparently they were quite well off and were constantly looking for a place to migrate to and leave Russia. Grandma often spoke of the Priest lists and they were forbidden to speak Polish or go to church.

Early in the 1900s, two of the older brothers came to Sydney and there was land offering here at one pound an acre. They did not like the country feeling it was the end of the world. They traveled around and went back to Russia. There were rumblings of war in the country and then on the death of the father, who apparently was a stern character, they decided to sell their estate. In 1909, the whole family traveled to Brazil where they bought a coffee plantation.

This plantation venture was not a great success and the climate was harsh. Most of them suffered with the tropical jungle fever. One of the brothers died and was buried in Brazil.

They sold the plantation and sailed to London. There they lived for about six months in 1911. Dad went to school there and so he had a working knowledge of the English language. At that time, the Russian Government was offering land grants to all who would settle in the Far East in Siberia. The Russo-Japanese War was a grim reminder of the fact that Siberia needed settlement and particularly to keep the Japanese at bay.

The Smykowsky family returned to Russia in 1911 and traveled to Siberia and took up farming land at Ragachovka. This was a small farming settlement on the river GobulXXX, a small tributary of the Amur River. It was half-way between Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.

When uncle Vincent and his family returned to Russia (USSR) after the war. They had made a considerable amount of money as they were farming outside Lyon in France during WW2.

Of course on arriving at the border they were relieved of their wealth and sent back to their original area from which they had left Russia in 1922, Ragachovka, Siberia. There Uncle Vincent, his wife and younger son Leon died, leaving only the two sisters living there. They were remarried.

The eldest daughter had married a Pole while they lived in France and she and her husband were smart enough to remain in France. Dad did contact them when he visited France with mum in 1958 and later after her death in 1969.

Peter Smykowsky the eldest son, I met when I visited Russia in 1974. He had been in the French Army and then returned to the farm to help his father. He was a teacher in France. During the war they were allotted Ukrainian prisoners of war to help with the farming. One of the prisoners of war, Peter married and returned to the USSR with her after the end of the war to Donetsk.

I met the three daughters of Peter (Dad’s brother)- they were Polya, Maria and Albina. They lived in Minsk, as they and their father did not migrate, but returned to the area from which they had come. It was some 20 miles south of Minsk.

Many of the cousins migrated to France. They were working in the factories around lyon. Some came out to Australia. The Goulaviches and Skurapadskys. They settled in Ayr and Mackay in the sugar growing areas.

Auntie Annie who was some two years older then Dad, traveled with her mother and she married a Mr Dimoff who was a Bulgarian. She had a daughter Vera and a son Tommy and they lived in XX until they finally moved to Townsville where they now live.

When visiting America in 1958, Dad tried to catch up with any children of his brother (maybe Frank). We know he had a son and a daughter. Although the name Smykowsky is not a very common name, Dad said there were always a few of that name in the telephone directories in the American cities he visited, but none were related or came from his area.

Vera says that during the war there was an American soldier stationed in Townsville or possibly passing through who was making enquiries about any Smykowsky’s living there. However, no contact was made.

The Gudimoff Family.

Ivan Ivanovich Gudimoff (born about 1865) married Natalia Gronikov (born about 1870). They both died in the famine in Siberia about 1935-36.

They would have married about 1888. The eldest son Ivan was born about 1890, he was about 12 or 13 years older than Mum, who was born in 1904. There were two brothers and two sisters:

Ivan

Juliana and another sister- These married and lived with their in-laws, so Mum had very little memory of them.

Stepan – younger brother

HELENA IVANOVNA GUDIMOFF (mum) – one of two twins, the other twin a boy did not survive.

The wedding was arranged and a matchmaker was involved. It was certainly not a love match. Grandfather Ivan was a Don Cossack, these were free men who had numerous privileges granted by the Tsars in return for their services during war and any attacks on the borders of Russia.

Ivan, however, was not a fighting man, he was a trader par excellence; he bought his way out of these services and worked as a bookkeeper and trader. He was a short man, with quite a sense of humour and not averse to a glass of vodka or two. Grandmother Natalia, on the other hand, was a rather tall woman, quite a good housekeeper, as was required of marriageable girls at that time. She also had a considerable dowry with quite extensive land holdings in the Cherigovskai Guberia in the Ukraine. I think it is where the Chernobyl disaster occurred in recent times in the USSR. Geographically, this district was not too far from the border of Belorussia where Dad lived.

Mum did not say very much about her mother, except when grandfather got too merry, she wasn’t above taking to him with her broom to sober him up. She seems to be very much in the background, which is not surprising, as Mum must have been quite a tomboy. She certainly never learnt any of the housewifery skills-she seemed to be best mainly in the fields riding a horse and taking care of her younger brother, Stephan.

She attended two or three years of compulsory schooling which meant she was able to read and write Russian, but was not given any further education. Apparently she begged her father to send her on for further schooling, but his view was that girls did not need any further education. All they needed was a dowry and a reasonable match in marriage.

Mum’s eldest brother, however, did receive a tertiary education but then he was the eldest son and heir. Grandfather wanted him to become a doctor, but Ivan had a mind of his own and studied Civil Engineering, concentrating on the building and operation of water mills which were used for flour grinding. The Gudimoffs were the local millers in their area in the Ukraine. As there were rumblings of war Ivan the eldest brother convinced the family to sell up all their holdings and migrate to Siberia where there were extensive land grants given by the Tsar to those who would settle at the far end of Russia.

Siberia always seemed to denote a place for political prisoners because of its distance from Moscow and the rest of Government. It was however quite a wealthy country.

The Gudimoff family settled in the wheat growing area and acted as millers to the area. This area was settled mainly by White Russians, all Catholics and mostly related to each other as they all migrated from Gomel in White Russia. I remember meeting an elderly lady who had migrated here after WW2 with her family. She had grown up in Siberia and remembered the area quite well. She spoke of the Ukrainian Family who had settled in the area amongst the White Russians. Since they were quite wealthy they built the water mill for milling flour. However, there was no constant running stream to turn the water wheel and so they had to dam some of the streams around to provide running water during the milling season. Unfortunately, during spring these dams overflowed and flooded the neighbouring fields and so compensation had to be paid to the farmers. The family were not too popular in the area.

This was a period of unrest in Russia, the war took all the young men to the front and there were no young people to help on the farms. They were killed during the war. There was much discontent amongst the people. They wanted representation in Parliament, but the Tsar was an autocrat, and although advised by many of his officials to give the people a greater hearing, he disregarded their advice. Mum’s brother, Ivan, was quite active politically, he was not a Communist, these were very few and far between, but he was a Bolshevik in that he believed that the people had a right to be heard.

The Duma in Russia was a gathering of all elected representatives of all the provinces in Russia and they gathered in Moscow to present their complaints and requests etc to the Tsar. Ivan was the elected representative of the Amursk province in the Duma. The last Duma held in XX. This was a debacle as the Tsar refused to listen to them and after several days of gathering they were dismissed and sent home. This was the beginning of the revolution in Russia. World War 1 was really the nail in the coffin as far as the Russian monarchy was concerned.

Ivan returned home and was apparently active agitating for greater representation and a curtailment of the powers of the Tsar. At no time was there ever any suggestion that the Tsar was to be removed and executed. This came about when Leon Trotsky and his mob of Communists were sent to Petrograd by train from Germany.

About 1917, Mum was 13 and she tells of soldiers returning and plundering and the White Army also coming around looking for dissenters. Her brother was jailed for his agitation. He managed to escape from prison but had to take one of the prison companions with him. The man was in prison for murder and so was quite an unsavoury character. This is what happened when the Communists took power, they let out all the convicted prisoners and these were the people enforcing the revolution.

Uncle Ivan had to hide out in the forest with his companion because of the White Army and soldiers returning from the war. Mum used to ride into the forest and take him food and other necessities. It was quite a dangerous time for a young 13 year ole girl but she managed.

1916 - The war is still on and Dad is drafted into the Red Army. His papers were mixed up with his sister’s who was two year’s older. So about 17 years of age he is sent to the army in Khabarook. He was promoted and when the revolution comes he was offered a job in the section connected with Banking. Dad had a knowledge of English and could read and write, also in Polish and Russian. America was sending the Russian Revolutionaries vast sums of money. If you refer to American history at that time you will hear this mentioned. An excellent book on this period is “10 days that shook the world”. It was also made into a film.

Dad was quite a handsome young man, dashing and an excellent dancer. I never could get out of Mum how that really met, because the Smykowskys were devout Catholics and mum came from a devout Orthodox family. But I must say for Mum, who was the most ecumenical person I have known. For her all religions were the gateway to the one God. Apparently there was much opposition on the part of her parents. But Mum must have been some girl. She was always laughing, had a most beautiful head of russet brown thick hair with a plait reaching to her waist. Mum could get on with anyone, children and old people particularly. She was quite vivacious. Jean, Adolph and Nata would know Mum after she had been through all the hardships of life and keeping Dad in check.

They were married in 1920 on Trinity Sunday. Mum of course went to live with his family as Dad was still stationed in Khabarovsk. I was born on a Sunday in 1921 and baptised almost immediately as the Catholic priest was visiting the village to say Mass that Sunday.

The revolution is spreading across Russia and arrives in the Far East about 1921. Remember the scene in the film Dr Zhivago where the train carries the main revolutionary to Vladivostok. Dad is offered a position in the Bolshevik Government to help with the banking in the Far East. However, they do not agree with the policies of the Bolsheviks and being seasoned travelers decide to leave Russia. Dad did have a Polish passport but he did not feel safe asking for a permit to leave so they decided to leave Russia and get to Harbin and then further down south and migrate to Canada or America.

So in February 1922, before the thaw had set in Grandfather Gudimoff made arrangements for them with some of the traders to be taken down to Harbin. Grandfather used to trade with the Chinese and Mongolian traders and buy from them salt and other necessities. Salt was important in Siberia for the preservation of food for the long winter months. He took us across the frozen Amur river and we were met by the traders and taken in the boats. I think Grandma or Aunty Annie came with us. It was quite a long trek and as we moved south the thaw was setting in and many of the small streams became raging torrents. Mum said they lost a couple of their trunks with a great deal of personal belongings. Consequently, there is very little to remind us of her former life. She did bring some photographs and her wedding blouse. I am afraid none of us girls, at our XX would have been to wear it.

The journey to Harbin was slow and treacherous. When we arrived we were settled in a camp for Polish refugees.

Нина Лукашевна Кингстон – Смыковская и Базыль Гулевич, (дед Джона Гулевича). г. Сидней, Австралия. 1944 год.

Нина Лукашевна Кингстон – Смыковская. Австралия.

Абакумова Нелли Михайловна. Свободный, Россия.

Джон Гулевич. Австралия.

Перевод Герман Гулевич. Лондон, Великобритания.