GREEK TOBACCO MOGULS IN AMERICA Part 3 By Steve Frangos Published in The National Herald, June 26, 2004 ------------------------------ I am excited that  The National Herald  has given Hellenic Genealogy Geek the right to reprint articles that may be of interest to our group.  ------------------------------ The meteoric rise of the Greek Cigarette makers in the United States from the 1870s to the 1920s is often treated as a freakish economic boom for a small number of individuals with little long-term consequences for Greek American history.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In terms of strictly commercial history, these Greek tobacconists employed literally hundreds of their fellow countrymen here in North America.  Diaspora Greeks from not only North America but the Balkans, Asia Minor, North Africa, England, and elsewhere were also employed in this trade, and very often by the same companies.  Finally, and ...

GREEK TOBACCO MOGULS IN AMERICA Part 2 By Steve Frangos Published in The National Herald, June 19, 2004 ------------------------------ I am excited that  The National Herald  has given Hellenic Genealogy Geek the right to reprint articles that may be of interest to our group.  ------------------------------ Between the mid-1880s and the end of World War I, Greek-owned cigarette manufacturing companies sprang up in Philadelphia and Boston with the vast majority of these companies settling, ultimaely, in New York City.  Phenomenally successful, the Greek companies soon dominated the top-end of the fine cigarette market.  Specializing in hand-rolled, blended-tobacco cigarettes, Greek immigrants became immediately associated, in the American mind, with this new trade.  American Tobacco monopolies bought out the larger Greek companies as early as 1900.  For many historians these purchases signaled the end of the Greek rol...