In World War One, when the German advance into Žemaitija and Courland started on April 27, 1915, Andriejavas (Andrzejewo) in the western part of Žemaitija was passed through by 12th Res. Brigade ( 6. Reserve-Division) at 7 p.m. the same day. During the German withdrawal from Russia at the end of 1918, the Red Army vanguard was stopped by Detachement Schlenther well short of this area.
In czarist times there was a postal facility there named Andrejevskoe V.P., and none during the German occupation. The opening of a Lithuanian postal agency at Andriejavas was effected not by the Pašto Valdyba appointing a postmaster (įgaliotinis), but by an arrangement proposed or agreed to by the local shire (valsčius) council. As was the case with some other localities, it was the local municipality that provided the premises, a postal clerk and possibly contributed to the facility’s upkeep.
The date of opening is not known. To start with, the Andriejavas facility was provided with values of Fourth Berlin Issue, followed by the Sėjėjas Issue etc. For cancelling, Andriejavas used two devices. Though it is not entirely certain which came first, the surviving franking suggests that the three-line cachet was the earlier one.
The three-line cachet read “Andrėjavo Valsčiaus / Valdyba / Kretingos apskr.” with date written in by hand, if at all. So far, this cachet has not survived in full and is being reconstructed.
For cancelling, the Andriejavas postal facility also used the Shire Council Seal inscribed “Andrėjavo Valsčiaus – Valdyba” – which confirms the close link between the postal facility and the Shire Council.
A regular calendar-type postmarker was supplied in ca. 1921. Some years later the spelling of the place-name was changed to Endriejavas, then back to Andriejavas. The sequence of variant spellings on postmarkers is shown by Fugalevičius as Nos. 415 – 418.
Known provisional markings:
Cancelling by three-line cachet:
No date, Berlin IV 30 [colln. Brazdeikis]
No date, Berlin IV 30 [colln. Doniela]Cancelling by Shire Seal:
No date, letter to a foreign destination, Berlin IV 10, 20, 80 [German auction]
No date, single, Berlin IV 50 [colln. Lapas]