Anna Natalie Noviskaite, or Anna Natalie Noviski in American English, was born to Kostantas Noviskis and Antonina Skirmontaite / Noviskiene on February 18, 1905, in Millville, New Jersey, USA. Even that simple statement actually requires some qualifications. Anna is one of the more complex and mysterious members of our family tree, even though most of the living Jagiellas in the Unites States new her quite well.
What makes Anna a bit of a mystery is two-fold:
1) We can’t find any records of her existence prior to her life with her parents in Marion, Indiana, when she was a bit older, and
2) DNA testing pretty much confirms beyond any doubt that Kostantas could not have been Anna’s biological father.
DNA evidence shows that all of the descendants of Wacław Jagiełłowicz and Anna Noviskaite are related to the DeLacey family of Kentucky. Without comprehensive DNA testing across generations, we don’t have absolute confirmation, but all indications are that Anna’s father was a member of the DeLacey family.
Despite her mysterious origins, the rest of Anna’s life is well known to her descendants, because she was born and raised in the United States and spoke English without any accent. Anna had two brothers – Eddie and Anthony. We now believe that they were actually half-brothers, Kostantas being their biological father. Anthony died as a baby. Eddie grew up with Anna in Marion, Indiana. Years later, Antonina Noviskiene adopted another boy, Johnny.
Johnny’s adoption was evidence of the type of social structure of small ethnic communities in the United States. Marion, Indiana, did not have many ethnic minorities, so the Noviskis family stood out. However, there were some other Lithuanians in the general area. One family was Johnny’s. His mother died when he was young, and his father drank. So, the Lithuanian community realized that someone had to take care of Johnny and his siblings. Antonina adopted Johnny, who by then was about the age of Antonina’s grandchildren. The descendants of Anna would fairly regularly visit Antonina, and over time came to know the extended family and friends from Marion, including “Uncle Johnny”.
Anna’s father Kostantas went by the American English name of Karl. He worked in foundries, and eventually moved his family to Marion, Indiana, where he worked in the foundry there. Anna’s two oldest children, Jan (John) and Francis (Frank) spent a lot of time with their grandparents in Marion, and had many stories about their mother.
One of the more entertaining stories was about the construction of the Noviskis family home at West Eighth Street. It was a Sears Roebuck Catalog Home, meaning that the home came in pieces ready for construction, along with the instructions. Unfortunately, Kostantas and his helpers couldn’t read English. So, as the story went, each day they would do as much as they could, and then wait for Anna to come home from school to read the directions and help them make their plans for that day and the next. The completed house was quite large for an immigrant family – they took in boarders until Antonina’s death and the sale of the home.
A similar story related by Anna’s son John related to Anna’s education. Antonina worked very hard, and looked forward to when Anna would be out of school and could stay home to help. Kostantas very seldom asserted authority, but, on this occasion, he did. As the story went, Kostantas slammed his foot down and yelled simply, “Anna’s going to school!” And so it happened that Anna completed high school in Marion, Indiana.
Anna was married to Wacław until his death in 1971. She then lived as a widow at their building at 3052 West 63rd Street in Chicago, Illinois, until near the end of her life when she moved in with her grandchildren and children. First, she lived with her granddaughter Anne-Marie, and then with the family of her son, John, at their farm in Hebron, Indiana. She died on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1994, in the arms of her grandson, Justin. As Justin related the story, as he held her, she looked one last time out the window of the room, and let out her last breath.
