Žanis Zekants is my husband’s great-grandfather. He was the youngest child of Jekob Zekants and Magreete Latīnis. His older siblings were Lizette, Andrejs, Karland Teodors. Žanis was born in 1892 and by May of 1915 he was dead at the age of 22. He was born in the town of Talsi in north-western Latvia. Žanis, along with his older brother Teodors, were not baptized in the Lutheran church until October of 1897. I believe this was the case because their parents, Jekob and Magreete, became Baptists for several years. This was somewhat popular in the Talsi area in the late 19th century. By the 1897 All Russia Census, they are once again listed as being Lutheran.
We really don’t know much about the childhood of this youngest Zekants sibling. Like his three brothers before him, he must have trained to be a sailor. There is a photograph of Žanis and his brothers, Karl and Andrejs, taken around 1910. This photograph was taken in modern-day Estonia and is the only known photograph of Žanis.
In September 1913, Žanis was married in St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Riga to Emilija Rozentals. This is the first documented connection between these two families. When WWI broke out in the middle of 1914, the young couple’s lives changed forever. There is no evidence that Žanis served in the military and would have been too young for Russian mandatory conscription service. Nevertheless, something took him up to the Gulf of Finland in the autumn of 1914. Maybe his sailing skills were needed on a mine-laying ship. Or maybe he helped to protect the Gulf of Finland, which was the gateway to St. Petersburg, from the enemy. Whatever the case, his wife, Emilija, went with him. This was not usual protocol and we are not sure why this happened. Was she a cook on the ship? Was she a nurse? She probably did not know that she was pregnant until it was too late to return home.
This brings us to the original family story from my father-in-law that started me on this journey. My father-in-law said that his father claimed he had been born in or around Helsinki. Not only that but he claimed to have been born on the frozen ice of the Gulf of Finland. This was an intriguing story indeed!
Although we may never know exactly why, it was clear that Žanis and Emilija were outside Helsinki during the unusually cold winter of 1914-1915. All ships were frozen in place and conditions must have been severe. Emilija gave birth to a son at the end of February 1915. They named him Žanis, presumably after his father. This boy, Žanis Jr. (known as John in Australia), would become my husband’s grandfather.
The young family then made their way back to Riga, a journey started by walking across the frozen sea to Tallinn. I don’t know how long this journey took them but by May 1915, Žanis was dying of tuberculosis in Riga. His death is recorded at St. Martin’s Church and he was buried at Lāčupes Cemetery nearby.
