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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

-1-


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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

notes on our family history

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