THE GREEK COLLECTIONS AT THE HARVARD LIBRARIES - This is the official blog of the Modern Greek Section of the Harvard College Library. It was created to showcase the items in the Modern Greek Collections at the Harvard Library with the aim of inspiring students in the Department of The Classics and beyond to further explore the resources available in the collections. All posts contain links to the item record in the Harvard Library System.  Every other month they post a list of recent acquisitions.   If you find an item you are interested in, visit your local public library either in person or online and order the book through the Inter-library loan program.  If you have trouble contact your local librarian for assistance. For more information about the Modern Greek Collections, please contact the Librarian for Hellenic Studies and Coordinator for the Classics, Rhea Lesage, at:  karabel@fas.harvard.edu A few categories that someone doing genealogy resea...

Our friend, Gregory Kontos (gkfamilytrees.com), has published a booklet titled THE GENEALOGIST'S DICTIONARY, Basic vocabulary for reading old Greek documents .   I received a copy of it today and will be keeping this handy booklet close by as I try to decipher Greek documents. “One of the hardest aspects of Greek genealogy is reading and translating the old Greek records. Based on our team’s research experience, this dictionary was created to help English-speaking researchers translate and understand basic lines of an old Greek document. We managed to create a wide database of more than 400 words, which, expanding geographically and socially, wishes to cover the most crucial translational needs of a Hellenic genealogist”. You can buy it now on Lulu -   http://www.lulu.com/shop/gkfamilytrees/the-genealogists-dictionary/ebook/product-22958289.html

GREEK AMERICAN COMMUNISTS AND THE SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE OF 1934 By Daniel Frontino Elash Published in the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, March 2007 - Volume 33 , pages 22-38 ----- DANIEL FRONTINO FLASH is a graduate student at San Francisco State University where he earned a BA degree in an interdisciplinary special major, Mediterranean Languages and History, which included the study of modern Greek, Italian, and Arabic. His graduate work focuses on American immigrant and labor history. ----- "While not exactly a household name, Nick Bordoise is a man of some importance to local and national labor history due to his violent death in the course of the 1934 longshoremen's strike in San Francisco. Due to the controversy then and now about the status of immigrants, especially those with radical political commitments, even those who do remember Bordoise do not necessarily remember that he was a Greek and a communist—two characterizations he wo...

Ancestry.com added a new database named CANADA, WWI CEF PERSONAL FILES, 1914-1918 which covers surnames beginning with A through G,   At the end of this posting you will find a listing of the 130 people born in Greece.  If you locate an ancestor's name, you can go to the website for the Library and Archives of Canada to do a search for FREE -  http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/personnel-records/Pages/search.aspx ABOUT THIS COLLECTION Shortly after the British declaration of war in August 1914, Canada offered an initial contingent of 25,000 for service overseas. A second contingent was offered in the autumn of 1914. The 1st Canadian Division was formed from units of the first contingent in January 1915, and was fighting in France the following month. In September 1915, the Canadian Corps was formed, incorporating the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions, and the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. Further contingents and reinforcement d...

The digital collections of the Greek State Archives offer a wealth of information to those of us interested in Greek genealogy.  As part of their online collection is the "Election Material From the Collection of Vlachoyiannis" .  This includes "General Election Lists" for each Municipality; recorded by community (city, village, settlement, etc.). You can view a scanned copy of each list, printed in the Greek language.  This is a GREAT resource, but very difficult to navigate for those who do not read Greek.  Each row includes:  Line # -  Given Name, Surname - Father's Name -  Age - Occupation. I have translated these pages and made them available in both Greek and English, doing my best to transcribe the information accurately.  I would always recommend viewing the original scanned copies (link below).    - To the best of my knowledge, these lists include all Males who were eligible to vote in...