This is an interesting article published by Hellas Frappe today (February 24, 2014. The Cretans of Al Hamidiyah in Syria "Al Hamidiyah is a town on the coastal Syrian line about 3km from the Lebanese border. The town was founded in a very short time on direct orders from the Turkish Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid II circa 1897, to serve as refuge for the Muslim Cretans fleeing the ethnic cleansing in Crete in the aftermath of the departure of Turkish troops from the island. The town is home to about 5000 people, with the majority still speaking Cretan Greek (with a distinctive Cretan accent) in their daily lives. Crete fell to the Turks in the sixteenth century, after long and stubborn resistance from the Venetians who had ruled the island until then. In the following centuries, many Cretans changed their religion, converting to the doctrines of Islam and becoming Alevites, the dominant religious sect among the Turks. In those days, it was not uncommon for people to change religi...

I am delinquint in writing this followup to my January 3, 2014 posting titled "Getting my family letters translated from Greek to English".   ----- ORIGINAL POST: Very excited!  I am taking Gregory Kontos up on his offer to do translations.  I have about 10 letters that I've been holding on to - I am the family pack rat after all.  These letters are from the 1950s and 1960s, sent to my grandparents and mother from Greece.   I don't think I will get any big surprises, but you never know.  Mostly I am looking forward to some additional names and a feel for what was going on in their lives at the time. ----- I was sooooo surprised.  I thought we just had some typical "how are you" letters.  Instead, I had a series of letters, from various relatives, describing a very sad situation with one of my grandfather's nieces.  I was able to read, in their own words, about some of their heartbreak back in Greece.  These w...

The FamilySearch.org website has a FREE database titled "United States Naval Enlistment Rendezvous, 1855-1891".  There are 353 entries with GREECE as the Place of Birth . Following are some excerpts from the FamilySearch.org wiki for this database: "A rendezvous was the recruiting station where the men enlisted in the Navy.  Officers at the rendezvous kept a record of each man enlisted and reported the information weekly to the Navy Department.  These documents are known as the "weekly returns of rendezvous reports." . . . .  Information found in this collection may include: Name of naval rendezvous Name of new recruit Date and term of enlistment Rating (rank) Name of ship to which assigned Previous naval service City and state where born (or in this case country = Greece) Age Occupation Personal description Read entire wiki entry for this database

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 the elections.   ...

Article published by the GreekNewsAgenda on February 18, 2014 The Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium will hold in Brussels a conference on Genocide and the massacres of Black Sea Greeks:  The issue of the recognition of victims, on February 20-21. Although the theme of genocide and their negation is at the center of modern debates, this is not true for the massacres.  The purpose of the conference is to initiate a debate on the issue of recognition of the victims of massacre and the suffering of loved ones, by examining a specific case, little known, that of Pontian Greeks, which has all parameters. What some call Pontian Greek Genocide during the First World War illustrates this phenomenon taking into account the fact that 360,000 people from Pontus were massacred. Among the participants are Herve Hasquin, Didier Viviers, Lambros Kouloumbaritsis, Artemis Menounou, Peter Lagrou, Ekaterini Lefka, Theodosios Kyriakidis and Jennifer Reilly Kel...

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 the elections.   ...