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NOTES ON OUR FAMILY HISTORY
Costas Demos
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Foreword
Years ago I had promised my sister Evro to write down
for her all that I recollected having been told of our family
antecedents, since being the eldest of the brothers and
sisters I was supposed to know more than the rest. This paper
has been growing on and off--mostly off--ever since, until it
reached the present stage toward completion. If in the future
I or any of the Family discover more that can be added, it
can be inserted at the end as an appendix.
My original sources were what I heard Father and Mother
tell; tid-bits from cousin Demetrakis, son of Fathers eldest
brother (he was seventeen years older than I was); and
stories told us by Uncle Socrates in Portaria in 1912. And
then as the project grew, almost all my brothers and sisters
contributed with their memoirs, and our Cyprus cousins helped
in the preparation of Mothers side.
A short bibliography at the end contains the sources
from which most of the material on Stephanos Doungas and
Demetrios Alexandrides has been gleaned.
Although this paper was originally intended for Evro and
the rest of my brothers and sisters, our children seem to be
interested in it, too. So occasionally explanatory material
has been included; what is clear and known to us Near-
Easterners is not necessarily as clear to our American
progeny.
Costas
May 1971
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NOTES ON OUR FAMILY HISTORY
How far back the name Hajidemos goes I do not know. Our
fathers grandfather was Hajidemos. Whether that was his
patronymic, or whether Demos (Demetrios) as his given name,
and he visited the Holy Land and so acquired the
Haji (=Pilgrim), I do not know.
Uncle Constantinos, Fathers eldest brother, for awhile
in his youth called himself Ioannites, from Ioanina, where he
had received his early education. But he later reverted to
Hajidemos. Then, later, Uncle Ioannes, who had commercial
interests in England and France, and made occasional trips to
those countries, changed the name to Demetracopoulos (he used
the French spelling Demetracopulo) either because it
sounded more dignified, or because there was another
Hajidemos firm also dealing with Liverpool; probably the
latter.
In the summer of 1912 our family spent a month in
Portaria, a town in Mt. Pelion, Thessaly, our fathers
birthplace. At that time Raphael and I were considering
coming to America to continue our studies and were trying to
decide how to make our name pronounceable there. Uncle
Socrates, who had come to visit us, suggested we change it to
Doungas (), the name of one of our paternalgrandmothers uncles.
This leads me to the story of the two illustrious uncles
of Grandmother: Stephanos Doungas ( or
), and Demetrios Alexandrides.
Stephanos, who adopted the name of Doungas, or Dounkas,
was a distinguished Greek scholar--philosopher-mathematician-
physicist--in the early years of the nineteenth century. He
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was born in Tyrnavo, Thessaly, and received his early
education in his home town under the noted educator John
Pezaros. Later, in Germany, he studied mathematics and the
physical sciences in the universities of Halle and Gttingen,
and (around 1800) philosophy under the philosopher Friedrich
Schelling at Jena.
In Vienna in 1803 he joined other Thessalian scholars:
Anthimos Gazis, Daniel Philippides, Zissis Cavras, and his
brother, Demetrios Alexandrides, under the leadership of
Gregory Constantas, and among them they made plans to found
at Miliais, one of the towns at the foot of Mt. Pelion in
Thessaly, an Academy or College for the Teaching of Greek and
Latin literature, mathematics, and other sciences. Books and
instruments were sent to Zagora, another one of the villages.
But the Turkish government refused its approval for the
project, and the funds they managed to raise were
insufficient. Constantas later managed to start a lyceum in
Miliais, with Gazis and Philippides among the professors.
In 1809, imbued with the pure ethics that abide in the
depths of the heart, says Rizos, he returned to Greece and
soon filled it with his renown. At the recommendation of the
scholarly Alexander (or John?) Mouzouris, Prince of
Wallachia,1 Doungas was appointed director and professor of
philosophy and of the physical sciences at the Grand National
College (.)2
1The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which now are combinedto form present-day Rumania, were then Turkish provinces ruled by
members of the Greek Phanariote families of Constantinople, appointedto the office of hospodars or princes by the Sultan. Under these
Greek princes many Greeks had settled in the two principalities andGreek culture was very strong among them.
2 This college had existed in Constantinople since before its fall tothe Turks in 1453, and had been reconstructed by the princely
Mourouzis family around 1800 in Kourou-Chesme, a suburb ofConstantinople on the Bosphorus. It has been one of the maineducational centers of the Greeks and among their highest educational
institutions. It is still functioning in the senction of Phanar, inIstanbul.
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The university was started, but the times were not
propitious. Shortly thereafter the Greek Revolution of 1821
broke out; the Turkish troops came down; the university along
with the towns and villages in Thessaly was destroyed; and
the instruments were confiscated by the Turks.
Stephanos was in Iasi at this time (1821), an aide to
Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, when the latter raised the
standard of the Revolution there; and when the movement in
Moldovia collapsed, he escaped over the border into Russia.
It seems that he later returned to Thessaly, where he died in
1830, in his sixties.
During his stay in Iasi, Doungas published a Complete
Course of Mathematics; he also wrote treatises on Aesthetics
and Ethics; his textbook on Physics was not published
probably due to the opposition of the Church to its contents.
Another paper, written by him on The Void, led his
good friend the poet Christopoulos to compose a witty Bacchic
poem starting:
,...
Another poem of Christopoulos, equally clever, addressed
to Doungas, starts:
,
, , ....
Cousin Demetrakis had never heard of Stephanos Doungas.
But he told me that our grandmother had an uncle, Alexandrs,
who had published a History of Greece, printed in Venice or
Vienna. (Educational works in Greek at that time were issued
mostly from the printing presses of Venice, Trieste, and
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Vienna.) One of the two extant copies of this work, he said,
had belonged to Uncle Socrates, who was a close friend of the
Manos family and who presented the book to them. (Aspasia
Manou, the wife of King Alexander of Greece, was a member of
this family.) He should have kept it as a family treasure,
said Demetrakis.
Not Alexandrs, but Alexandrides must have been the name
that Demetrakis mentioned to me.
Demetrios Alesandrides, physician and letterateur, from
Tyrnavo, Thessaly, was another one of the bright stars that
shone in the skies of the Greek Enlightenment that took place
at the turn of the century. He was a younger brother of
Stephanos Doungas. He was orphaned when quite young, and was
brought up by his older brother, who taught him his first
letters and the rudiments of literature, and encouraged him
in his desire to study medicine.
Alexandrides did translate into Greek and publish in
Vienna in 1806, the History of Greece by Oliver Goldsmith--
the history to which Demetrakis evidently referred. He was a
widely educated and influential man; he handled with ease
both modern and ancient Greek, and was versed also in the
main European languages, as well as in Turkish and Arabic.
Besides his Greek History, he published many other books and
papers, including a Greco-Turkish Dictionary and a Grammar of
the Turkish Language. Between the years 1812 and 1829 he
edited in Vienna one of the oldest Greek newspapers, the
(Greek Telegraph). He died in 1851 at theage of 67.
If these two men, Stephanos and Demetrios, were
Grandmothers uncles on her fathers side, her last name must
have been Alexandrides; if maternal uncles, her last name is
unknown to us.
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Our fathers family, according to Demetrakis, came to
Portaria from the region of Agrapha, on the Pindus Mountains,
which they left to escape Turkish oppression. (I havenot
been able to substantiate this elsewhere.)
Our fathers father was the youngest of three children:
Athanasios, Nicolaos, and Demetrios.
Athanasios Hajidemos, the eldest, entered the priesthood
as Anthimos. He was a young boy, sixteen or seventeen years
(?) old, a novice in the court of the Patriarch Gregoris V in
Constantinople at the time the Greek Revolution broke out. As
soon as the news of the revolt reached the capital, the
Turkish authorities arrested all the higher Greek clergy,
including the Patriarch and his court, and in their fury had
them all executed by hanging and then tossed their bodies in
the streets. Among those arrested was Anthimos, but he
escaped death that awaited the rest only because the
patriarch, taking pity of his youth, managed to get
permission from the prison authorities to send him out of the
prison as a messenger, conveying letters from the patriarch
to the Greek clergy in the city urging them to denounce the
revolution from their pulpits.
Anthimos later rose to be Metropolitan (= bishop or
archbishop) of Philippopolis, in Bulgaria, during the first
patriarchate of Joachim III. At that time, in the early
1870s, the Bulgarians were agitating to have the church
liturgy in Bulgarian instead of in Greek. [Anthimos supported
their aspirations and urged the patriarchate to grant their
demands in order to avoid a possible schism. He was
overruled, and deposed from his see for being too
Bulgarophile. Events proved that he was right; the Bulgarian
church denounced its ties to the Greek patriarchate.]3
3Although the part in brackets has been told to me, it rather seemsthat our Anthimos may have been confused with another, Anthimos
Mihailof, a Bulgarian bishop.
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He seems to have spent his old age at Portaria. When I
visited there in 1929 I was asked repeatedly if I was a
relative of the Despotis Hajidemos. He bequeathed his
episcopal vestments and tall hat to the church in Portaria to
be preserved for the next Partarite who might attain the
office of despotis. (Despotis is the common word in Greek
to designate bishop.)
Metroplitan Anthimos possessed a piece of the True
Cross (). He bequeathed it to our grandmother,who passed it on to Katina, the wife of Demetrakis; from her
it came into the possession of her sisters Eleftheria and
Olga, who live in Springfield, Ohio. They were much concerned
about its disposition; they are very old ladies, and they did
not want it to fall into the hands of anyone who would try to
commercialize it. They have finally given it to their niece,
Demetrakis daughter Helen Batsakes, in who care it now
reposes. It is considered a very precious relic, bringing
blessings to its possessor, healing the sick, etc.
Nicolaos and Demetrios settled in Smyrna, where they
were engaged in the export-import trade. Thes when their
father died in Portaria the three brothers agreed that if the
youngest, Demetrios, would return to Portaria and take care
of the home place (olive grove and vineyard), marry, and rear
a family, Anthimos would help him financially, since the home
place could not provide much of a living. All that Demetrios
asked for was that his children be assured an education.
Anthimos provided this very faithfully; of the four of
Demetrios children who grew to maturity, three completed
their studies at the National University at Athens; the
youngest, our father Stavros, was a third-year student at the
gymnasium in Athens when his uncle died, so unfortunately he
never did get through the gymnasium. Incidentally, Father
once told us that he had failed in trigonometry; knowing how
theoretical and abstruse the Greek Algebra and Trigonometry
textbooks are, I am not surprised.
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Grandfather Demetrios remembered his trip from Smyrna to
Volo by sailboat as a very rough experience. It must been
wintertime, and the passage was very stormy. The sailboat was
about forty days crossing the Aegean; before the trip was
over the food supply was exhausted; and in order to keep
warm, they had to tear up wooden parts of the inside of the
sailboat for firewood. (This must have occurred in the
1830s.)
The family house in Portaria had a spring in the
courtyard with a plentiful supply of clear cold water. It was
evidently one of the few homes with running water on its
property. In the other homes in the neighborhood, the girls
had to go to the public fountain up the street to get the
water for their homes--among them young Irene, who later
became Demetrios wife and our grandmother. At that time she,
as well as all the other girls, used to think how lucky the
girl would be who married into this family and did not have
the drudgery of hauling water all the time. Well, she became
the one!
The family home, like all the other houses in Portaria,
was built on the steep slopes of Mt. Pelion, and like all the
other houses it had thick stone walls, the better to resist
attack by brigand or Turk. For additional defense it had
loop-holes at strategic points through which muskets could be
discharged. The house was tri-level. A person went up a few
steps from the entrance to a room on the right. This was
called the winter-room, where the family lived almost
entirely during the cold season -- it was used as a kitchen,
dining room, living room, even bedroom. It was a long room,
with a fireplace at one end, which served also for cooking,
and a window at the other. The winters in these mountain
villages were bitterly cold, but this room was fully
protected from the elements. In summer the room was used for
storage.
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Up a few more steps, and one was on the second floor,
which as I remember, had two rooms--dining room and kitchen.
The top floor was almost at the level of the street on
the uphill side; it had a wide hallway extending the full
length, with two rooms on each side of it; the windows on the
uphill side looked out on the street, their sills not far
above the street level, whereas on the downhill side the view
stretched out to the mountains across the Pagasetic Gulf. The
windows had heavy, strong wooden shutters. In wintertime,
when usually the snow was so deep that the front door could
not be opened, they often went in and out through the windows
on the street level of this top floor!
The house is no more. It was destroyed by the Germans
during World War II when, in retaliation for the activities
of the underground, they destroyed a goodly part of Portaria.
Another stone house has replaced it, much on the same plan
and on the original foundation, but somewhat more modern. The
old spring is gone, and water is now piped from the mother-
spring high up the mountain.
To Demetrios were born three daughters (I think) and ten
sons. My impression is that the daughters were born to a
first wife, who died at childbirth, and that Irene was the
mother of the boys. But my sisters insist that Irene was the
only wife, and the mother of all. In any case, Father knew
very little of his sisters--they probably had died before he
was born.
Of the ten boys, only four lived to maturity; the rest
died in infancy except Philip, who lived to the age of five
and was our fathers playmate, being the closest to him in
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age. The eldest son was Constantinos; then came Ioannes; then
somewhere down the lower part of the list came Socrates;
Philip was ninth; tenth and last was Stavros, our father. He
was twenty-five years younger than his oldest brother.
Constantinos inherited the disposition of his father who
was quite hot-tempered. Grandmother was the opposite--even-
tempered and of a serene disposition. Our father was very
much like her in that respect.
After Constantinos finished his studies in Ioannina and
at the University at Athens, he returned to Portaria where he
started teaching. Other cities, including Athens, tried to
lure him, but he felt that his home town came first. The
school became an important educational influence among the
Peliohoria--the twenty-four villages on the slopes of Mt.
Pelion. We have met lawyers and doctors, and priests and
poets, both in Thessaly and in Athens, who had received their
elementary education under him and spoke very highly of their
master.Everyone of them was grateful for the fact that he
had been to school under Constantinos. One of the well-known
literary figures of the twenties, speaking of Uncle once said
to us, We received hard beatings, but he made Men out of
us. The school was of course for boys only; country girls
were not supposed to need any education in those days.
Neither one of my grandmothers could read or write.
During winter the students stayed in the village and
boarded in our home or among the neighbors; traveling back
and forth to their village homes was not feasible.
Uncle Constantinos was a hard taskmaster and strict
disciplinarian, as students evidently expected their teachers
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to be in those days. His pupils, including our father, were
all scared of him. While visiting there in 1929, I went with
Father to call on the priest at Ano Volos--one of the
villages. He was a jolly old fellow, full of stories. He and
Father had been in school together under Uncle Constantinos.
As they reminisced, the priest told of a punishment meted to
one of the pupils; the culprit was made to sit at the
entrance of the schoolroom while the whole school were
ordered to march by and each boy spit on his face!
Portaria and the rest of Thessaly belonged to Turkey in those
days. It did not become a part of Greece until 1881. Prior to
that there were frequent disturbance and calls for union with
Greece. Since Turkey would not allow any school to function
there, Uncles school was built under ground, inside the side
of the mountain, away from town. The big boys in school (and
most of them were big boys) used to have their guns with them
in school, and a scout would be posted out on the hill to
watch for possible enemy attack, with Uncle ready to lead his
pupils out to fight. And there was the time--I think at the
time of the Crimean War, when Constantinos must have been in
his mid-twenties--when there was an uprising in the country,
and Uncle took off to the mountains with his pupils and leda
guerrilla band against the Turks. when things were quiet
again, teacher and pupils were all back again in their
underground, secret school.
Father was still a little boy when his father died, and
he was brought up by Uncle Constantinos, so he always felt
grateful to his older brother. He attended Uncles school,
starting when he was quite little. He remembers that when he
was through with the -- the primer -- Uncle gavehim Aristotles (De anima) for his next reader!
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Constantinos married late in life, a negotiated marriage
of course. He was trying to marry into money; the girls
family, on the the other hand, thought that he was rich. Both
sides found out their mistake after it was all over, with
recriminations on both sides. It was not a very happy
marriage. Their only son was Demetrakis. There was also a
daughter, who died very young.
The parents of Demetrakis had died before he was ten,
and he was brought up by our grandmother mostly. About the
time I was born, Demetrakis, then seventeen, came and lived
at our home for awhile.
The wife of Demetrakis was Katina, from Volo, and the
children were Costas (died in Greece during the Second World
War), and Helen, ten years younger. The family (except
Costas) migrated to the United States in 1922, and finally
settled in Cincinnati, after a few years in Columbus and
Springfield, Ohio. Demetrakis and Katina died within months
of each other, in 1944--he of lung cancer (he was an
inveterate smoker), she of diabetes. Helen married a
Spartiate, Peter (Panayotis) Batsakes; they are properous,
have three children and (so far) six grandchildren.
Uncle Ioannes, after his graduation from the university,
settled in Smyrna and engaged in the export trade, primarily
with London and Liverpool, England. He married Euthymia, a
Greek girl whose parents lived in England and who had gone to
school there. His eldest son Criton was for many years in
India, connected with and English-Greek mining company there;
he died in his twenties. Thanos, the second son, for a long
time lived in Smyrna, where he was connected with the
Oriental Carpet Mfg. Co. In 1922 he fled from Smyrna to
Athens along with his English-Levantine wife Helen, his
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daughter Thetis, and his and his wifes mothers. At that time
Smyrna, which had been placed under Greek occupation at the
end of World War I, was reoccupied by the Turks, who then set
fire to the city and ravaged the Christian population. There
was uncontrolled looting, people were massacred, girls
carried away to harems. A great many escaped, mostly in small
boats, across the water to the island of Samos and other
islands nearby, and to steamers waiting off shore to help the
escapees.
Metros, the youngest son of Uncle Ioannes, died in his teens.
Uncle Ioannes for a long time was one of the overseers of the
. This academy is Smyrna was the equivalentof the Grand National College in Constantinople, and one of
the main educational institutions of the Greeks. It has been
discontinued since 1922.
Our third uncle, Socrates, according to Demetrakis, as
originally named Zissis. Since he did not like his name he
arbitrarily changed it to Socrates. He never married,
although in his youth for quite a while he had his
Aprhodite. For many years he was manager of the sulphur
mines on the island of Melos, in the Cyclades; later he
became the manager of the magnesite mines on the island of
Euboea (those contain the richest magnesite deposits in the
world.) Uncle Socrates died about the time the First World
War ended.
I, and the whole family, met Uncle Socrates only once,
when he visited us that summer of 1912 in Portaria. He was
tall and big--6 feet--handsome, with blue eyes (one of them
artificial.) He was a well-rounded man, well-educated, had
been to Europe and England, had an extensive library of both
English and Greek books, and moved in high society in Athens.
He and Father kept up a fairly regular correspondence to the
end.
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Mother was from Larnaca, Cyprus, the daughter of Michael
Constantinides (although baptized Raphael, he was always
known as Michael); Zoe was our grandmother, and the nine
children in the family were Katina, Euphrosyne, Nicolakis,
George, Anna (our mother), Costats, Demosthenes, Eurydice,
and Miltiades, in that order.
Our maternal grandfather had been married twice, and Zoe
was his second wife. There were two daughters by the first
marriage, (Crysteleni) and (Thecla). THelast was still living in 1939, a very old woman.
During the Greek War of Independence the Cypriots did
not revolt but they secretly helped to the best of their
ability those fighting in Greece. The Turks in revenge
arrested the Greek Archbishop, the bishops and the higher
clergy, and many prominent citizens, and hanged them outside
the cathedral (on July 9, 1821). This date is observed as a
day of mourning in Cyprus, on which memorial services and
prayers for the dead are held in the churches. Our
grandfather in Larnaca, who was a lad of 12 in those troubled
times, was caught by the Turkish troops and forced by them to
help carry and bury the corpses that were lying in the
streets.
Our mothers family were all very close to each other.
All those in Larnaca lived together to the end, as one
family, in the same household. When Aunt Eurydice died, her
children were brought up by Aunt Euphrosyne and the uncles.
We in Constantinople could count every fall upon the arrival
from Larnace of a crate full of good things of Cyprus --
halloumi cheese, ambelopoulia (pickled whole little birds),
smoked wild ham, handwoven material for clothing, Cyprus
honey, jams and jellies, etc. When Uncle Nicolakis came into
hard times in Egypt, he was helped to come back home. When
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Raphael and I were planning to come to this country our
uncles very willingly came to our help and lent us the
additional money we needed. Uncle Demosthenes helped support
Theclous family also whenever they needed help. And so it
went.
Both of Mothers parents were without education; they
evidently could neither read nor write. Her children used to
tease Grandmother; theyd open a book and show her a letter
and ask: Mother, what is this? Well, my child, this looks
to me like a cane. And that, Mother? Oh, that is a
cross. And so on.
Grandfather, who had a grocery, but could neither read
nor write, had his own system of keeping accounts--by use of
his grocery items. For example, three chick-peas put aside
meant that customer A owed him three plasters; customer B was
likewise represented by beans, and so on.
It was at this time, by the way, that Grandfather ran
afoul of the Turks again: In the garden behind the house he
used to raise tobacco, strictly for his own private use,
since the sale o tobacco was a government monopoly. Someone
accused him to the authorities of growing and selling tobacco
from his own private stock; he was arrested and spent a short
time (a few days?) in prison before the matter was cleared
up.
Grandfather died before I was born, probably in the
eighties; Grandmother lived until 1901. She had the
satisfaction of seeing Raphael and me when I was only two,
and Mother took us for a short visit to Cyprus and her
parental home. Not until 1922, thirty years later, did Mother
see her home town again.
My younger sisters, who with Miltiades had accompanied Mother
to Cyprus, gave me a sketchy description of the home there.
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The house was L-shaped. As you entered, there was a corridor
leading to a partly covered court or patio surrounded a
little pool with goldfish in it.
The corridor was flanked on the left by a rarely-used
parlor, and on the right by a family room. Back of this room
was the dining room, then the kitchen, and on the floor above
were five bedrooms. The house used to have a thatched roof,
which before 1910 had been replaced by a modern roof.
Across the court from the kitchen was a little
structure--a Turkish bath.
Behind the house was the large garden. Vegetables were
raised there fro the family year round; it contained every
variety of semi-tropical flowers, and fruit trees galore: Ten
or fifteen pomegranate trees, lemon trees--bearing fruit
twice a year--, orange and other varieties of citrus fruit,
fig, banana, date-palm, mulberry, etc.
The parents saw to it that all their children received a
good education. The only one that missed out was Aunt
Euphrosyne. She did not complete the elementary grades
because, being the oldest living daughter, she was needed at
home to help bring up the growing family. She took charge of
the household after Grandmothers death, and became a mother
to Aunt Eurydices children and brought them up after the
latter died. She was born in 1857, and lived until 1941,
having outlived all her younger sisters.
Mothers eldest sister, Katina, died at the age of 26.
According to Mother, Katina contracted typhoid fever and the
doctor instructed that she be given no solid food. But Katina
begged her mother for some bread, and her mother gave it to
her--what the doctor didnt know wouldnt hurt. This, they
thought, brought on her death.
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Uncle George taught in the Larnaca secondary schools
until his death in an auto accident in 1922. He was the
author of a Greek grammar, a History of Cyprus, and probably
other works also. He never married. He was very widely known;
when, in 1922, Mother and her younger children visited
Cyprus, wherever they went, Evro and Dorothy were introduced
as the nieces of the teacher.
Uncle Demosthenes worked in the bank at Larnaca. He and
Uncle George supported the home there, and lent a helping
hand to all the rest of the family. He was very well known
and quite popular around town, and was asked to become
godfather to over one hundred girl babies. (Among Greeks,
being a godparent is considered an honor and a
responsibility. The godparent assumes an obligation to see to
it that the godchild is well provided for; his home is always
open to it; if the child is orphaned and in need, he takes
charge. And since godchildren of the same godparent are
spiritual brothers and sisters and therefore the Church does
not permit them to intermarry, a godparent is careful to
sponsor godchildren of the same sex always.)
Uncle Demosthenes once made an unscheduled visit to
Greece. He had had an attack of hiccups, which continued for
over a week, in spite of all attempts to stop it. Suggestions
of remedies reached him from all over the island; they were
all tried, but to no avail. The doctors finally advised him
to go to Athens for an operation. He started on the trip,
boarded the ship, and his hiccups stopped as soon as it had
sailed! So willy-nilly he enjoyed a pleasant vacation touring
Greece.
Uncle Demosthenes also never married.
Uncle Costas and his wife Anna lived in Nicosia, where
he was in the British government service. No children.
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Uncle Miltiades was evidently big for his age in his
teens, and he complained to his mother that people always
took him for a grown-up. Her answer: Dont worry, they can
tell your age as soon as you open your mouth. Soon after
Father and Mother were married Miltiades came to Smyrna and
stayed with them for awhile; he was then in his late teens.
Mother said Miltiades used to criticize her cooking. Anna,
you burned the roast again! Anna, this doesnt taste right;
at home it tasted lots better. etc. But poor Father, said
Mother, never uttered a word of complaint. Incidentally,
Mother developed into an excellent cook and cooking teacher,
as her daughters culinary achievements can testify.
Miltiades eventually emigrated to America, and married
there (Aunt Nellie). He died shortly after Raphael and I came
here in 1913. He had been employed in the U.S. Customs
Service in Boston.
In spite of the fact that we lived so far from Mothers
family, we always had close relations and frequent
correspondence with them.
Outside of the children of Mothers half-sisters, about
whom I do not know, we had three cousins on our mothers
side: Alexandra, Epaminondas (Minos), and Niobe, the children
of Mothers sister Eurydice Philalethous. Aunt Eurydice died
about a year after the birth of her youngest child--shortly
after her mothers death. When this youngest child was born,
each one of her grandmothers wanted the baby to be named
after her--Athena, or Zoe; the argument was settled by naming
her Niobe.
Our sister Evro, who was born the following year, was
named after her aunt. Similarly, our Miltiades was so named
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at the request of Mothers mother; her youngest son had just
emigrated to America and she wished to have a Miltiades
closer home.
The derivation of the names of the rest of us: I am
named after Fathers brother Constantinos, to whom Father
owed his upbringing and education; Raphael, Irene, Demetrios,
and Zoe have the names of their grandparents. When the fifth
child was born, we were given by Father the names Stephanos
and Philippos--the two best known of the seven deacons of the
early church (Acts 6)--to choose from; I chose Stephanos.
Father was away on a recuperation trip when the last child
was born; he wrote suggesting the names Theodora or
Dorothea--gift of God--and we agreed on Dorothea.
When Father quit school in his youth it seems he went to
Smyrna and worked in the export-import business of his
brothers Ioannes (John) and Socrates. During that time he
made at least one trip to Lisbon and Liverpool. He managed to
learn English at this time. He became able to speak English--
rather haltingly and with a strongly Greek pronunciation--but
he could read and understand it perfectly, and he excelled as
a translator or interpreter. When some English or American
guest preacher came around, Father would do the translating
while the man preached, and I used to be amazed at how
fluently and correctly he did the interpreting; I envied him
his ability.
Father went through a deep religious experience and was
converted to Protestantism (became a Christian) in his late
twenties, I believe. He had been very depressed, and
contemplated suicide when with a friend he happened to drop
in on one of the Sunday services of the Rev. Mr.
Constantinou, the Greek Protestant minister in Smyrna. He was
deeply impressed, and kept on coming regularly until he
finally joined the church as a member. For this, his brother
Constantinos wrote him a very stern letter and disowned him.
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Father has told that he used to see Mother come to
church in Smyrna on Sundays with the girls from the American
Collegiate Institute, where she taught. He admired her, and
thought it was a pity that such a girl ran the danger of
becoming lost to Protestantism by being grabbed in marriage
by an outsider. So he tried to persuade a close friend of
his, a good Protestant, to marry her. But his friend finally
turned on him: If you think so highly of her, why not marry
her yourself? This opened Fathers eyes, and Mother was
receptive to the idea. Mother has told us that she tore her
handkerchief in her hands to shreds waiting while Father was
struggling through the agony of proposal!
Some time after he was married, Father quit working for
his brothers and went into similar business with his cousin
Polychronis. Eventually their business failed. Mother had to
take her two babies and go live at her parents home in
Cyprus for a few months while Father found some way to earn a
living. This was the last visit she had with her mother; they
never met again.
At about this time the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was looking for a worker to
serve as assistant pastor to the Greek Evangelical Church in
Constantinople, and had settled on Mr. Michelidakis, who was
a colporteur for the British and Foreign Bible Society in
Ioannina. Father was suggested as a replacement for Mr.
Michelidakis. But the Bible Society was reluctant to give up
a tried and experienced worker, and since Father was so
highly spoken of a a devout and active Christian, the Bible
Society suggested tot he ABCFM to ask Father to accept the
pastoral assignment. Father went to Constantinople first, and
Mother and babies followed a couple of months later, early in
1894. I have a vague memory on this trip of our going down
the steep stairs from the deck to our cabin. We actually had
brought deck passage--we could not afford a stateroom--but
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after we came on board Mother arranged with one of the ships
officers for him to let us have his cabin for a small
consideration. This was common practice in those days.
While Father was alone in Constantinople we stayed in
the house of Polychronis in Smyrna; I vaguely remember him
sitting on a chair outside the door with me on his knee,
trying to get me to take a puff on his cigar or cigarette,
and laughing when I choked. I was about three years old then.
Father was a man of prayer, and was very active in
religious work, and stayed that way, without loss of fervor,
all his life. He studied the Bible regularly and
consistently--I believe he actually knew it by heart--and
read all religious books he could lay his hands on. He set
out one time to translate John Bunyans Holy War into
Greek, since he admired Pilgrims Progress, which was
already found in Greek.
The language that we spoke at home was of course Greek--
Constantinople Greek. But Father occasionally used Portaria
and Smyrna words and idioms, and Mother never completely
outgrew her Cypriot pronunciation and manner of constructing
her sentences. We children, especially Raphael, liked to
tease her about it.
Father used to make preaching or pastoral trips of one
or two weeks duration during the summer, to towns that had
small Greek Protestant communities without a pastor. In one
of those trips, around 1900, he contracted malaria in
Sardogan, in northern Asia Minor. He was seriously sick and
suffered for a long time, and it was years before he fully
recovered; in fact, he was never very strong the rest of his
life, and suffered from frequent nervous headaches and
insomnia. What helped him most on his road to recovery was a
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months-long sea trip that he took on doctors orders in 1905
(the year his youngest child Dorothy was born.) On that trip
he also visited his old mother Irene in Portaria--the first
time that he saw her since before his marriage, and the last.
She died about a year or so later, in her nineties.
Although Father never studied music, music had an appeal
for him. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and liked to lead in
the singing. Whenever I played of an evening on the little
reed organ we had at home, he would come in and stretch out
and listen and relax. Music had a restful effect on him.
Father seemed to have a special appeal for the young
people in the church, both during his stay in Constantinople,
and even more so after he retired to Athens with the family.
Young people would flock around him, to talk with him, to ask
his advice, because he understood them and accepted them, and
they could talk freely with him, as among themselves.
The American missionaries had a small school in Larnaca,
Cyprus, Mothers home town, at the time Mother was a
youngster, and she attended this school. She was an excellent
pupil, at the head of her class, excelling especially in
mathematics. When the school stopped functioning (a few years
after the 1878 occupation of Cyprus by the British) Mrs.
Fluhart, the head of the school, feeling that so talented a
girl should be encouraged to continue her education,
suggested to Mothers family that she be sent to the American
Collegiate Institute for Girls in Smyrna-- a junior college
newly started by the ABCFM of the Congregational Church. THis
posed a problem to the family: Wasnt Anna in danger of
losing her Orthodoxy if she attended a Protestant Institution
away from home? Conference after conference took place to
discuss this, with the whole neighborhood participating.
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Uncle George was strongly in favor, and the rest finally
approved also. In the meanwhile, the sixteen- or seventeen-
year-old Anna had been acting as a teacher to the
neighborhood children--whether it was because she may have
spent that year at home out of school, or because it was
summer vacation, I do not know. (Although Cyprus has free
primary education, it does not have a compulsory education
law even now.)
Mother continued to excel in her studies in Smyrna, and
graduated there in 1886, a member of the schools first
graduating class, of two members; a third member of the class
had to drop out in her senior year because of ill health.
Mother stayed on as a teacher at the the school for the
following three years. And evidently during this period she
attended the Protestant church services, and decided to join
the Protestant church, as her family had feared she might do.
Perhaps what helped her to this decision was the fact
that during this time she had met Father, at the weekly
evening meetings or the get-togethers of the young people at
the home of Mr. Constantinou, the pastor of the church. When
Father asked her to marry him, Mother wrote home for
permission. So Uncle George came over, to look over and
examine all about Father to see if he was worthy of her. And
permission was granted.
Mother used to keep a diary at that time. When I was
about ten or twelve years old I discovered it one day, hidden
in the bottom drawer of the bureau, and I read two or three
pages at random before my conscience stopped me. She must
have been quite in love with Father. A phrase in it started:
..;another one: ... She was twenty-six, and Father
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was thirty-two when they were married on Christmas day in
1889.
It was a happy and successful marriage. I dont remember
ever hearing my parents arguing or shouting at each other; if
any of my brothers or sisters knows otherwise, I wish theyd
correct me. Father almost always discussed all matters with
Mother. One time, when Dorothy was little, and the children
had an argument at the table as to who would get what, Father
tried to quiet them and stop their arguing. Do you ever hear
your mother and me arguing? he asked. Yes, I did piped up
little Dorothy, to everyones surprise. You were arguing
about apples. You said to Mother, You take the larger one,
and she said, No, you take it. That gave Father a chance to
expand on his lecture. Arguments like that, he said, I
pray you may always have.
Being a minister meant more to our parents than just
holding Sunday service and mid-week meetings; it meant
ministering to the people. Our house was open at all times to
those who needed help. When countrymen from the small
Protestant communities in the surrounding towns came to the
Big City, our home was their stopping place, overnight or
longer. We children complained that we ran a free hotel. My
parents overheard me one time--I was five or six then--
innocently asking a guest how much longer he would be
staying, and they gave me quite a lecture on hospitality!
Our mother, as a preachers wife, considered herself as
much involved in ministering as Father did. Fortunately she
was a natural-born social worker. People came all the time to
her as well at to Father for counselling or consoling.
Whenever anyone was sick, had a baby, was in trouble, Mother
was there to help.
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The poor also we always had with us, and they were
helped, out of Fathers meager and frequently irregular
preachers salary, even when it meant that we would have to
get along without necessities ourselves. In fact, there were
times when we did not know where the next days meals would
come from; but the Lord always did provide.
For about fifteen years, from 1907 on, we lived not far
from the American School at Gedik Pasha (a section of the old
Byzantium), where all nine of us children attended school.
The American missionary ladies who ran the school came to
depend a great deal on our parents. I have met Mrs. Marden
and Miss Anna B. Jones (who had been the principal) in this
country after their retirement, and both expressed a high
regard and appreciation of the help our parents, especially
Mother, gave them. They often brought their problems and
troubles to her; if a teacher suddenly quit, Mother would go
over and pitch-hit until a new teacher was found; on one or
two occasions they even requested her to board or give
lodging to a teacher when her family would not let her come
to Constantinople to teach unless it could be arranged for
her to live in the Demetracopoulos home.
Our mothers social work reached its culmination with
the coming of World War I. When Turkey entered the war, the
Greek population of the coastal towns of Thrace were expelled
from their homes. Many of these people had been well-to-do--
some quite rich--but they had to abandon their property on a
few hours notice and migrate with very few of their
belongings. Almost all were women and children and old
people, since the men had been drafted into the Turkish army,
or else killed. Most of them drifted to Constantinople, where
their lot was terrible--strangers, with no place to live, no
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means of support. Children barefoot, thinly dressed, went
about begging for food and money. They were not the ordinary
run-of-the-mill beggars; they seemed courteous and refined.
On inquiry our parents found out that they belonged to
refugee families. Mother was especially impressed by two
young children. She learned from them that their mother and
sister were sick at home. She went with them to where they
resided, to see what she could do to help, and was appalled
at what she saw. THey lived in a room in an old, condemned
building, bare of any furniture, without heat; the mother and
the daughter were lying on newspapers on the floor sick with
typhoid fever, devoid of blankets or any covers; the father
had been killed by the Turks.
The American Red Cross mission had arrived in
Constantinople a very short time before. Mother went to them
for help, and saw to it the family was given mattresses,
blankets, some money, and whatever else was urgently needed.
A doctor and a worker accompanied her and attended to the
sick women.
That was the beginning of Mothers refugee work. She
took the Red Cross workers over to see first-hand how these
people existed. The Red Cross was impressed with her efforts
and her concern and came to her aid. She was provided with a
sum of money regularly to distribute while the need lasted,
and also with blankets, clothing, kitchen pans and pots, etc.
Mother also arranged with the American School at Gedik Pasha,
close by, for it to admit the refugee children in school free
of charge, and at the same time went around finding work for
as many of the refugees as she could.
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For awhile there was an abundance of walnuts in the
city; these could not be exported because of the war. Father
would buy them by the sackful, and theyd be doled out to the
hungry children a fistful at a time. The walnut supply did
not last very long; the Germans came and made arrangements to
have them exported to Germany. So, big sackfuls of raisins,
which also were plentiful, took their place in our home.
Our parents believed in going beyond just these efforts.
They believed in giving of themselves, and in involving their
children, their whole family, in the work of assistance to
these suffering fellow-humans. Father and Mother decided that
they would give up eating morning and noon meals on Saturdays
so as to invite a refugee to eat a meal a week as a guest of
the family. The children also wanted to do likewise, but
Father decided that they needed their nourishment for their
growth, and so they were allowed to skip only their Saturday
breakfast.
But the above story has brought these notes down to our
own generation, which is beyond the ground I intended to
cover when I started this paper. I will only add, for the
benefit of my generations children and grandchildren, that
our parents finally left Constantinople after the Turks under
Kemal Ataturk reoccupied the city in 1922. Mother with the
three youngest children--the only ones still at home--went to
Cyprus for her first visit there since 1893, and after nearly
a years stay there at the parental home, she returned to
Constantinople and rejoined Father. In 1926, on Fathers
retirement, they went to Athens, where Stephanos and Eurydice
were already established, and there spent their remaining
years. Mother lived until 1927, when she reached the age of
64; Father died in 1936, in his eighty-first year.4
4 Father has said he was not sure whether he was born in 1856 or 1857; rather thought it was 1857.
But the town records in Portaria, when searched by Miltiades in 1931, when he had to clear hisGreek military status, showed the birth date as 1/13 March 1856.
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Appendix I
(The following passage, about Father, has been
translated from Greek Evangelical Communities of Asia Minor
by Ioannes Agapides, Thessalonica, 1950, pp. 38-41.)
At the hall called Rest, at Koum-Kapou of
Constantinople, the Rev. Stavros Demetracopoulos preached
every Sunday afternoon to a group of about 50 that used to
gather there. Besides this preaching on Sundays, there were
also gatherings of brethren at his home on Thursday evenings
for prayer-meetings, and on Monday evenings for Bible study
and the reading of instructive religious books. These
meetings proved very helpful and constructive, and gave great
impetus to the spiritual development of the attending
brethren.
The Rev. Stavros Demetracopoulos was a person with deep
spiritual culture; of genuine Christian character; a tender
heart; fine and noble sensibilities; and a Christian
simplicity and inimitable humility. He had an ingrained
nobility of character and great sweetness in his manner. But
he was mainly noted for his deep piety. And as such, he
enjoyed absolute respect and esteem on the part of all his
flock.
The Rev. Stavros Demetracopoulos had no formal education
in theology, neither did he appear to have had any special
education, but withal he utilized his life in a positive and
successful manner in the service of the Gospel. It can be
safely asserted about him, without any danger of being
characterized as an exaggeration, that his ideally Christian
life--both as an individual and as a family man--benefitted
many people even more than did his sermons. Here is how Mr.
Riggs, the American missionary, expressed himself about him
when he was about to ordain him--in violation of the
ecclesiastical regulations that the ordination candidate must
be a seminary graduate--as a worker of the Gospel: Stavros
Demetracopoulos has received his theology education under God
himself, Who has already ordained him and assigned him to His
work. And we only perform the laying on of the hands.
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But the Rev. Stavros Demetracopoulos was also an
excellent pedagogue, without having studied in the field of
education. This is illustrated by the following anecdote,
which is characteristic of the unusually fine character of
this man: At one time as punishment for a misdeed of one of
his children, the father told him to stay four hours in the
cellar of his house. But the child refused to submit to this
punishment; so the father himself--with the sangfroid and
simplicity that distinguished him--went down to the cellar
and submitted himself to the punishment in place of his
disobedient child, because he believed that punishment is the
natural result of disobedience.
Those of the brethren of that time that had come close
contact with the late Rev. Stavros Demetracopoulos still keep
alive in their memories his sympathetic appearance, and will
always remember his sweet and calm face, a symbol of his
goodness and his holy Christian life. He remained in the
service of the Gospel in Constantinople continuously for 23
years, from 19035 to 1926, when, going to Athens, he ended
his active service on account of his advanced age.
5 1903 was the year of ordination; his ministry began in 1894. After the death of Rev. Stavros
Michaelides in 1903, Rev. Demetracopoulos had charge of the Sunday morning service at the BibleHouse, as well as of the afternoon service at the Rest.
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Appendix II
( The following was read at the Founders Day Celebration of PierceCollege at Hagia Paraskevi, Athens in February 1970)
ANNA CONSTANTINIDOU-DEMETRACOPOULOU was born in Larnaca, Cyprus, on March
1, 1863, fifth in a family of nine children.After her first few years of elementary schooling she attended a
small American school in Larnaca directed by Mrs. S.T.Fluhart. Upon hergraduation and at the recommendation of Mrs. Fluhart she and herclassmate, Dorothea Michaelidou, went to Smyrna to attend the newly-founded AMERICAN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, which was later renamed AmericanCollegiate Institute and was the predecessor of Orlinda Childs PierceCollege. The two girls completed the course of studies and graduated in1886 as the only members of their class, which was the first to begraduated from this school. Their diplomas, which they received on thefirst of July of that year, were signed by the joint Principals Mary L.Page and Agnes M. Lord.
After working as a teacher for three years, Anna was married in
December 1889 to Stavros Demetracopoulos, who at that time was inbusiness in Smyrna. The couple settled in Smyrna where their first twochildren were born. Annas husband was called to the ministry and wasappointed by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions totake charge of the Greek Protestant Church in Constantinople, to whichcity the family moved late in 1893 or early in 1894. Seven more childrenwere born to them there. She worked with her husband in Constantinopleuntil his retirement in 1926, when they moved to Athens. Anna died inAthens on October 14, 1927.
As the wife of a pastor, she shared in the duties of his work inthe church. Besides leading in the activities of the women of the church,she kept her house open for any who were in need of counsel orassistance. She never failed to visit and help the sick and those who hadsuffered loss or other misfortune. Acquaintances from out of town, who
came for medical treatment or even personal business, used to comestraight to her home knowing they would find unstinted hospitality, andthe family table, especially on Sundays, was seldom without one or morepersons who were invited to partake of the simple meal. During, andshortly after, World War I, before there was any organized reliefservice, she had so many protgs who came to her door for help that sheran a one-man soup kitchen for them. On occasion she even took chargeof classes at the neighboring American School of Ghedik Pasha upon urgentappeals to replace sick teachers. And she did all this while taking careof her growing family with little or no help and on the limited meansprovided by a pastors salary.
In perfect harmony and cooperation with her husband, Anna broughtup her children to be dependent on their own resources and to become
responsible members of the community. She aught them the dignity of workand self-discipline. She tried to inspire them with an awareness of theirduty to serve others. She encouraged in them a love for learning and adesire for self-improvement. Of her eight children, who survived earlyyouth, four chose teaching as their life-work, and most of the otherstaught school at some time.
In her quiet, modest and self-effacing way, Anna made her presencefelt in the circle in which she had been placed in life.
February 1970