Akelaitis completed only a four-year secondary school and worked as a tutor for nobility's children at various manors in present-day Poland and Lithuania.

He wrote texts that were meant for the common folk in Lithuanian, but his articles and studies for the intelligentsia were written in Polish as it was considered the language of culture at the time.

He collaborated with Simonas Daukantas and Motiejus Valančius on plans to establish the first Lithuanian-language periodical Pakeleivingas, but failed to secure government's permits.

His mother obtained a housekeeper's job in Marijampolė where Akelaitis took private lessons with a local priest and an organist in Sasnava.

[3] In addition to his native Lithuanian, he learned Polish, Russian, German, French, Latin, some Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew.

[1] In 1858, Akelaitis moved to Jaunsvirlauka [lv] (German: Neu-Bergfried) in Courland to live with Petras Smuglevičius, a medical doctor and a relative of painter Franciszek Smuglewicz.

[9] Akelaitis, Daukantas, and bishop Motiejus Valančius wanted to establish Pakeleivingas, a Lithuanian-language periodical aimed at the ordinary village people, but could not get government's permission.

Adam Honory Kirkor invited him to work for Kurier Wileński but Akelaitis refused as the pay was too low.

[6][10] According to the diary of Jakub Gieysztor [pl], Akelaitis had no money and so he donated his mother's ring and watch for the demonstration.

[15] When the Uprising of 1863 broke out, Akeliatis returned to Lithuania and became an assistant commissioner of the Polish National Government in Augustów.

[1] He published two issues of the Lithuanian newsletter Żinia apej Lenku wajna su Maskolejs ("News about the Polish War with the Muscovites") in February and March 1864.

[13] Towards the end of the uprising he escaped to East Prussia where he joined Lithuanian activities and attracted attention from the German police.

[1] Living in poverty, he still worked for the Polish and Lithuanian causes,[16] contributing articles various periodicals, including to Polish Gazeta Warszawska, Kurjer Warszawski, and Lithuanian Gazieta lietuviška [lt] and Aušra (contributed an article on the names of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania).

[1] He had a regular column in the Polish Wiek [pl] where he wrote about Parisian art exhibitions, French science and culture, Exposition Universelle (1878), etc.

[15] He edited the Lithuanian section of trilingual newspaper Zmowa – Kupos susitarimas – Hromadzki zhowor which appeared in 1870 (after the first issue, its publication was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War).

[16] He helped Vladislovas Dembskis [lt] edit and publish a Lithuanian translation of Livre du peuple by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais in 1870.

[14] Overall, Akelaitis supported the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Polish-Lithuanian identity – he believed that Lithuanians should join the Polish nation, but keep their language and culture.

[18] Akelaitis' Lithuanian texts were written mostly in the Western Aukštaitian dialect and attempted to use correct language, avoid various loan words, use lively descriptions from everyday speech.

He attributed the Prussian trinity (Potrimpo, Peckols, and Perkūnas) to Lithuanians and analyzed their names from the linguistic point of view.

[20] It was a Lithuanian (Western Aukštaitian dialect)[4] primer, two prayer books, and two reworkings of short didactic stories by Jan Chodźko [pl], Kwestorius po Lietuwą ważinedamas żmonis bemokinąsis (Quaestor, Traveling Across Lithuania, Teaches People) and Jonas Iszmisłoczius kromininkas (Shopkeeper John the Wise), which in turn was a reworking of a French story by Laurent-Pierre de Jussieu [fr] and was already published in Lithuanian in 1823.

It is an unfinished 387-page study on Lithuania, its territory, inhabitants, economy, religion, education, administration under the Russian Empire.

[14] The work mixed statistical data with emotional condemnation of the Tsarist regime and its Russification policies, discussed the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and accused the regime of economic and agricultural downturn, and idealized the policies of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (e.g. religious tolerance or the Statutes of Lithuania).

[1] His manuscript of a Polish translation of the Lithuanian epic poem The Seasons by Kristijonas Donelaitis was confiscated by the police in 1861.