Life Story of Greek Peddler born 1866

I just found an interesting short autobiography “THE LIFE STORY OF A GREEK PEDDLER – contributed by a Spartan now living in a suburb near New York City”.


This story was published in 1906 as Chapter IV (pages 63-79) in a book titled “The Stories of undistinguished Americans as told by themselves”, which was developed from a series of articles previously published in theIndependent. This is made available to you through the Harvard University Library online.

The person telling this story is unnamed. He was born about 1866 “in a little hamlet among the mountains of Laconia in Greece. There were only about 200 people in this place, and they lived in stone huts or cottages…..”

He gives a description of homes, how they made butter, wine, ground wheat and oats, and made clothing, farming, no need for currency, schooling, saint’s days and other holiday traditions, politics, superstition, the trip to the United States, the push cart business, and more.

This is an interesting read, I would suggest it.