The organizers of the 2nd International Greek Ancestry Conference, Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry and Georgia Stryker Keilman of the Hellenic Genealogy Geek welcome you to this celebration of Greek genealogy and family history.

What is it like to deal with traumatic family history? Why does one decide to explore it and make it public? What was the Greek-American immigrant experience in the late 1940s-early 1950s, and how has it changed? Distinguished Greek-American author, Nicholas Gage, will answer these and more questions posed by Gregory Kontos.

In his long career as journalist, author, and producer, Nicholas Gage has spent the first half as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent and the second writing seven books and producing several films, one of which was nominated for an Academy Award as best picture.

As a reporter for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, he received wide recognition for his investigative articles on organized crime, drug trafficking and political corruption. (He obtained the first Nixon tapes in the Watergate scandal.) Abroad, he covered numerous wars and revolutions, including the Iranian uprising that toppled the Shah.  He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize six times and received numerous awards for his reporting, including the Newspaper Guild’s Page One prize for investigative reporting and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Award for distinguished career achievement.  His adventures as an investigative reporter were dramatized in a CBS television series, The Andros Targets. His books include Greek Fire, A Place for Us, and Eleni, his account of his mother’s life and death during the Greek Civil War.  Translated into 32 languages, it was nominated as best biography of the year by the National Book Critics Circle and received the top literary prize of 1984 from the Royal Society of Literature of Great Britain.  “If Eleni were fiction, it would bear the mark of genius,” wrote The New York Review of Books about the memoir. Gage’s next book, A Place For Us, was widely praised as a moving saga of the immigrant experience, and its prose, Time magazine said in its review, “echoes Checkov.” His most recent work, Greek Fire, is a dual biography of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis.  The book, wrote The Washington Post, “illuminates not only its subjects but the craft of biography as well.” In between writing books, he has worked in motion pictures, serving as co-producer of the film version of Eleni and as co-executive producer of The Godfather Part III, which was nominated for an Oscar as best picture in 1994. In recognition for his work, he has received five honorary degrees, including a doctorate in 1985 from Boston University, where he gave the commencement address. Mr. Gage, who established a scholarship fund at Boston University in memory of his mother, has been active in a number of philanthropic and human rights organizations for which he has raised several million dollars, and is an archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

He is married to Columbia Journalism School classmate Joan Paulson and they are the parents of three children: Christos, a screenwriter in Los Angeles; Eleni, also an author, who has published two books, a travel memoir, North of Ithaka, and a novel, Other Waters, and Marina, a designer in San Francisco.

Research in Greek records cannot begin unless you have an ancestor’s original surname and village of origin. Many who emigrated changed their surnames, but it is the original name which is found in the documents kept by the churches and municipalities. Records in Greece are kept at the village level, and there are many villages with the same name. So, where do you start? This presentation will provide strategies for finding these two key pieces of information in the country where the immigrant settled.

Carol Kostakos Petranek serves as an Assistant Director of the Washington, D.C. Family History Center where she coordinates classes, conferences and community outreach projects. She is an active member of the Greek genealogy community and shares her knowledge by participating in Greek online associations, writing articles, and teaching at local and national conferences. Her ancestors are from several Spartan villages including Agios Ioannis and Amykles. Her passion for Greek family history has prompted her to volunteer to preserve at-risk and historic records in Greece, beginning with digitization of marriage records at the Metropolis of Sparta. She is affiliated with FamilySearch on several initiatives, and with GreekAncestry.net on record acquisitions in Greece. Carol blogs about Greek research at SpartanRoots and Agios Ioannis, Sparta. She also writes personal and family histories, and is a volunteer at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. 

This presentation describes the significance of one of the most important diaspora communities of Modern Greece, the Greeks in Egypt. From the early 19th century through the 1950s there was a substantial presence of European communities in Egypt, among which the Greeks were the largest. Moreover, the Greeks enjoyed a uniquely close relationship to the Egyptians and contributed to the country’s development even after they lost their privileges in the 1930s.

Professor Alexander Kitroeff was born in Athens and educated in the United Kingdom where he received his doctorate degree in modern history from the University of Oxford. He is currently Professor of History at Haverford College in Pennsylvania and has taught at several other institutions including the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College CUNY, the Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies at New York University, The American College of Greece and College Year in Athens. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora from 1980 through 2013 when the journal ceased publication. His research focuses on identity in Greece and its diaspora on in a broad range from politics and sports, on which he has published extensively. His most recent books are The Greeks and the Making of Modern Egypt (2019) and Greek Orthodoxy in America: a modern history (2020.) He has also collaborated with film director Maria Iliou as historical consultant in several documentary films including “The Journey: the Greek Dream in America”; “Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City” and “Athens Between East & West, 1821-1896” which is the first of a 5-part series on the city’s modern history. Mr. Kitroeff is currently working on two book projects, a history of AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association to mark the organization’s centenary in 2022, and a history of Greek-owned diner restaurants in America.

Where is that article or database you remember seeing 2 years ago? Georgia will talk about the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Research Links website; a categorized list of resources to help with your Greek genealogy research. Over 2,500 links to tools, databases, websites, articles, books and much more. What are some of the most important, but least used, resources?

Georgia Stryker Keilman is the founder of the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook group and blog.  In May 2021 also launched the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Research Links website which categorizes thousands of links to websites, databases, articles, books, etc. of interest to people doing Hellenic genealogy research.
All four of her grandparents were born in Greece.  Georgia’s interest in collecting books and documentation on Greek immigrants began in the mid-1990s while working and living in Australia where there was an abundance of recently published materials on the subject.  Upon her return to the U.S., Georgia continued to collect books, articles, and data on the worldwide Greek diaspora.
In the year 2010 Georgia formed the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook group and blog to share all that she had collected with those interested in researching their own family history.  The group has grown to over 30,800 members as of December 2021.  Georgia strives to encourage people to contribute by helping others and share information.

The Eftychia Project provides assistance and support, free of charge, to Greek-born adoptees searching for their roots and Greek families searching for their children lost to adoption. Our presentation will cover who we are, what we do and how our adoptee-led activism has made great strides in the fight for the birth and identity rights of all Greek-born adoptees.

Linda Carol Trotter is a Greek-born adoptee and the President of The Eftychia Project. Born Eftychia Noula in Stranoma, Nafpaktias, she was adopted in 1958 as an infant from the Municipal Foundlings Home of Athens (Vrefokomeio Athinon) by American parents. After finding her biological mother and extended family in Greece through a miraculous set of circumstances in June 2017, Linda Carol/Eftychia wanted to help other Greek-born adoptees find their biological families and experience the same joy of reconnecting with their cultural roots. With the help of like-minded friends, in April 2019, she founded The Eftychia Project (TEP), a US-based nonprofit organization which assists and supports, free of charge, Greek-born adoptees searching for their roots and Greek families searching for their children lost to adoption. To date, TEP has facilitated the reconnections of 11 adoptees with their biological families in Greece. TEP programs include DNA kit distribution wherein DNA kits are distributed, free of charge, to Greek adoptees and Greek families seeking their lost loved ones, and education about Greek language, culture and heritage for Greek adoptees and the general public.  And, perhaps most importantly, TEP, advocating on behalf of all Greek-born adoptees with the Greek government, has led the fight for their birth and identity rights, especially their birthright of Greek citizenship. Since finding her Greek family, Linda Carol/Eftychia has traveled to Greece 30 times to visit her family and to do the work of TEP, splitting time between her homes in Franklin, Tennessee USA and Nafpaktos, Greece. Linda Carol/Eftychia and her husband of 29 years, Bob Trotter, have two children, Heather, age 27 and Justin, age 26.

What was a Greek resistance fighter thinking a few moments before his execution by the Nazis, and what was the role of the Greek church in preserving and sharing these thoughts with the executionee’s family?

Sofia Pitsineli is a graduate of the Department of History & Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has served as a volunteer at the Center for Asia Minor Studies, the War Museum of Athens and the Army History Directorate, and currently works as a historian and research assistant at Greek Ancestry.

Have you ever wondered about the day-to-day activities of your ancestors’ lives? How did they prepare and preserve food, make clothing, educate their children? When did paved roads and modern conveniences arrive in rural villages? This presentation will help us understand the conditions and circumstances of our Greek families pre-World War II.

Ioannis Michalakakos was born in Athens in 1985 to a Maniot family. He holds a BA in House Economy and Ecology from Charokopeio University (Athens) and a MSc in Cultural Management from the Hellenic Open University. He studies the history of Mani and Lakonia and has published various articles. He is an active member of the Greek genealogical community and has participated in major initiatives. Ioannis also administrates Maniatika, a blog dedicated to Maniot history and genealogy.

Apart from names of ancestors, old Greek records include precious information about our family history and allow us to reconstruct it. What your great-grandfather received as a dowry from his wife offers insights into the family’s economy. The value of your ancestors’ property indicates their social status. A notarial record can even tell you how an ancestor’s house was decorated back in the early 19th century, while student absences found in school registers show you how much time your ancestors spent working during their childhood.

Gregory Kontos was born in Brussels in 1996. He holds degrees in history from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the University of Leiden. He currently is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Athens. He has an expertise in the history of migration, nationalism and religion. A genealogy fan from a young age, in 2020, Gregory founded Greek Ancestry, a Greek genealogy business based in Patras, Greece. Greek Ancestry’s goal is twofold: on the one hand, it aims at contributing to records preservation and accessibility through digitization and indexing projects, while on the other hand, it also focuses on educational initiatives, such as the International Greek Ancestry Conference, webinars, articles etc. Gregory has led all the Greek projects run by MyHeritage, and has a long list of co-operations with genealogy companies and projects, including, among others, Ancestry ProGenealogists, Trace.com, Legacy Tree Genealogists, PBS show “Finding your Roots”, BBC show “A House Through Time”.

The ‘Kingdom of Morea Archives’ collection covers the period of the second Venetian conquest of the Peloponnese (1685-1715). It has been the subject of historical research in the past, but has had very limited genealogical examination. During this session, Nick aims to share his findings with you, help you familiarise yourself with the practical steps when accessing the archives, and give you a taste of what is available.

Born in Norwich, England but raised in Greece, Nick Santas returned to the UK to study Economics and Finance. He qualified as an Accountant and worked for the English National Health Service for eight years and the Foreign Office for a further three years. He quit his job in 2018 to pursue his dream of studying Law and is currently in his last year, including a semester in Vienna, Austria. With roots from the village of Kastorio at the foot of Mount Taygetus in Laconia, the village of Vathia in Aposkieri Mani, the Arvanites of Methana and the Roumeliotes of Mount Parnassos, he began his genealogy journey in 2015 when he first came across his great-grandparents’ records in pre-war Lynn, MA. Little did he know that six years later his tree would include over 500 people. During this year’s Hellenic Genealogy Conference, he is hoping to introduce you to his recent exciting work on the Venetian Archives of the Kingdom of Morea (1685-1715) and hopefully to help answer some of your questions on how to access and use this service.

The Hellenic Chronicle Newspaper was the largest USA-based Greek-American weekly published in English. It featured church, community, and organization news from across the country as well as national and international news of interest to Greek Americans. The newspaper microfilm was only partial, and the last substantial paper collection was falling apart. This presentation will discuss the initiative to digitize and preserve this important collection, and plans to make it publicly accessible.

Nancy Agris Savage is the Team Leader of The Hellenic Chronicle Digitization Project and Executive Director of The Peter Agris Memorial Journalism Scholarships, and the former Editor-in-Chief of The Hellenic Chronicle and a Senior Staff Counsel of The House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Meletios Pouliopoulos is a Greek music historian and archivist, and founder of the non profit organization, Greek Cultural Resources.  He is an author, researcher, and lecturer, and produces a weekly radio program. He is a Consultant to the Hellenic Chronicle Digitization Project.

The vast Ottoman archives housed in various state and private collections in Europe and the Near and Middle East – a large number of which are hitherto unpublished – hold an unparalleled anthroponymic treasure for the ethnic groups which once lived under Ottoman rule.

Georgios Liakopoulos obtained a doctorate in Ottoman History from Royal Holloway, University of London (2009). He taught Modern Turkish Language (2010–13) and Ottoman History and Palaeography (2016–18) at the University of Athens and Freie Universität Berlin (2019). His publications are mainly focused on Ottoman epigraphy, the edition of Ottoman archival material, the historical geography/demography and economic and environmental history of the Greek Lands under Ottoman rule. He is currently employed as Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, ‘Palaeo-Science and History’ Independent Research Group.

Thanks to Greek Ancestry’s expansive database of historical Greek records, we have been able to obtain insightful statistics about the world of our ancestors. In this presentation, we will review naming patterns and demographic data from various time periods and areas of Greece, which will help you to better understand your own family history.

Alexandra Kiritsy is a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She has been researching her personal genealogy for over five years and enjoys studying various topics in genetic genealogy. Alexandra is especially passionate about engaging young people in Greek genealogy and exploring different perspectives of family history.

DNA testing opens a whole new world of possibilities to the family history researcher. It can help you find and connect with new family members, confirm relationships, and provide a greater context by revealing your ethnic origins. It may even help you break through brick walls and solve mysteries you would never have found answers to elsewhere. In this session, Daniel will show you how you can leverage the MyHeritage DNA test for your genealogy research and utilize the unique tools available on MyHeritage to make the most of your results.

Dedicated to Genealogy since 1986, Daniel Horowitz was the teacher and the study guide editor of the family history project “Searching for My Roots” in Venezuela for 15 years. He was a board member of The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) for 10 years, now is involved in several crowdsource digitization and transcription projects, and holds a board-level position at The Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA). Since 2006 Daniel has been working at MyHeritage liaising with genealogy societies, bloggers, and media, as well as lecturing, and attending conferences around the world.

Why and how to create an e-book on the history and the genealogy of a village? What are the sources that such a project should look for? The project about the village of Peplos in Thrace creates an e-book presenting instances of the history of the village, the population composition before and after the Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey, an overview of the topography of the village and its public buildings, local customs and focuses on the families of the village, collecting family names and information about their roots.

Ioannis Papachristou was born in Athens in 1980 to families hailing from Eastern Thrace and Marmara Island. He studied Philosophy at the University of Patras (BA) and the University of Athens (MPhil) and received his PhD in Ancient Philosophy from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has been a postdoctoral researcher with teaching duties at various universities (Humboldt, Paris IV-Sorbonne, Genève and Athens). Currently he is working on the research program ‘Sourcebook of Byzantine Philosophy’ (University of Athens). He studies the history of the area of ​​Propontis and published various articles on Marmara islands. In 2015 he edited the Anagraphē tēs Kyzikou (A Description of Cyzicus, 1825), a 19^th-century historical treatise on Artakē and the Peninsula of Cyzicus (Kyzikos Publications — awarded by the Hestia of Nea Smyrnē). In 2019 he published the traveler’s book The Marble Island: Travels in Marmara Island (Baltas Publications, 2019). In 2019-2020 he participated in the Research Project ‘The Islands of Marmara: Documentation and Risk Assessment of Architectural Heritage’ (Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Turkey) publishing a bilingual volume on the cultural heritage at risk of the Marmara islands. He co-administrates the page ‘Marmara Island (History and Genealogy)’ in Facebook and runs the website www.periegesis.gr a page presenting his travels in Greece and Turkey.

The Amykles Villages History Project preserves and documents the history of these historically significant villages, as shared by its descendants both in Greece and in the Diaspora. It is a historical repository of the villages’ ancestors and way of life, shown through multi-media memories, photos, videos, and interviews. The project lead, Paula Antonakos-Boswell will share tips and techniques for starting and maintaining your own Village History Project to preserve both the present and the past for years to come.

Paula Antonakos-Boswell born in Montreal, Canada, descends from generations of ancestors born in Amykles villages. As a child, she lived in Amykles for five years before returning to Canada at age eight. Paula is an active member of her Kingston Greek Community and Church and the Greek Community Lead and Administrator of the Kingston Greek History Project for which she wrote grant proposals, conducted oral interviews, created walking/driving tours of the area, and collected photographs and histories. This collection is now housed at the Queen’s University Archives: https://kingstongreekhistoryproject.com/.
Paula has degrees in Economics, Accounting and Finance from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She is also TESOL certified in ESL and a Volunteer English Educator to Immigrant Syrian Refugees in Canada, and she taught English in Spain during the summer of 2018. Paula is also a professional instructor and has taught Accounting at the local Community College for many years.
As the family historian and archivist, Paula is administer of a family website. She is dedicated to her passion for researching and archiving family and village histories. Paula has recently retired from her rewarding, thirty-two year career as a proud Canadian Public servant, and will return to Amykles in April 2022 to continue with the Amykles Villages History Project to produce her own walking tour Vlog and to conduct villager Oral History interviews. She and her distant cousin, Diane Gotses Jackson, continue with their goal of making the Amykles Villages History Project a repository of history and photos and which will be accessible to all.

The presentation reveals the history of Paleo Iraklio (Παλαιό Ηράκλειο Αττικής), a settlement of Bavarian families founded by Royal decree by King Otho I of Greece. This project, part of Greek Ancestry’s VHPI, attempts to trace the origins of these original colonists, and their descendants, via the construction of a unified family tree. The discussion will also focus on the resource tools used by the author while attempting to uncover his family history and ancestors who trace their origins to this village.

Bavarian descendant John Wagner was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, the chosen homeland of his immigrant parents who both arrived separately from Greece during the 1950’s. His father, grandfather, and 7 aunts and uncles were all born in Paleo Iraklio and all immigrated to Canada during the same period. He continues to pursue genealogy projects that help him understand his Greek and Bavarian roots and hopes to help others understand this aspect of Greek history.

What to do with the stories, photos, and documents you have accumulated in your genealogical research? It’s time to get them out of your computer and filing cabinets, and into a format that can be shared with your family. This presentation will demonstrate various formats—paper and digital—which Georgia and Carol are using to help others learn about their ancestors’ lives and their descendants.

Carol Kostakos Petranek serves as an Assistant Director of the Washington, D.C. Family History Center where she coordinates classes, conferences and community outreach projects. She is an active member of the Greek genealogy community and shares her knowledge by participating in Greek online associations, writing articles, and teaching at local and national conferences. Her ancestors are from several Spartan villages including Agios Ioannis and Amykles. Her passion for Greek family history has prompted her to volunteer to preserve at-risk and historic records in Greece, beginning with digitization of marriage records at the Metropolis of Sparta. She is affiliated with FamilySearch on several initiatives, and with GreekAncestry.net on record acquisitions in Greece. Carol blogs about Greek research at SpartanRoots and Agios Ioannis, Sparta. She also writes personal and family histories, and is a volunteer at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Georgia Stryker Keilman is the founder of the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook group and blog.  In May 2021 also launched the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Research Links website which categorizes thousands of links to websites, databases, articles, books, etc. of interest to people doing Hellenic genealogy research.

All four of her grandparents were born in Greece.  Georgia’s interest in collecting books and documentation on Greek immigrants began in the mid-1990s while working and living in Australia where there was an abundance of recently published materials on the subject.  Upon her return to the U.S., Georgia continued to collect books, articles, and data on the worldwide Greek diaspora.

In the year 2010 Georgia formed the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook group and blog to share all that she had collected with those interested in researching their own family history.  The group has grown to over 30,800 members as of December 2021.  Georgia strives to encourage people to contribute by helping others and share information.