Town Registers (Dimotologion Koinointos) are among the most important documents we can find for our families. A Dimotologion lists the parents and children in a family and includes for each person: birthdate and birthplace, permanent residence, occupation, religion, citizenship status and municipal registration. In villages surrounding Sparta, these Town Registers were compiled in 1955. Details can be found at this post.

As exciting as it is to find a Dimotologion, we have to remember that it may be incomplete. And never forget that any record can be inaccurate.

The example below is the Town Register for my great-grandparents, Georgios Michail Aridas and his wife, Afroditi Lerikou, of Agios Ioannis, Sparta. They had five children: Aspasia born 1886; Dimitra born 1891; Harikleia (my grandmother) born 1893; Michail born 1894; Aristedes born 1905. However, only Dimitra appears in this record.

Why are the other children not listed? In 1955, Aristedes appears in the Dimotologion with his own family, so he is not shown with his parents. All of the others had emigrated to America long before 1955. There are many entries which retain the names of children living in Canada, the U.S., and other countries. So the answer is: there is no logical explanation as to why only Dimitra appears on this record. But the more important point is that this record is not complete.

I recently found a different example of an incomplete Dimotologion record. It does not include the names of the parents! The Town Register below lists five sons of Efstratios Goranitis from the village of Parori, Lakonia: Ilias born 1911, Damaskinos born 1912, Georgios born 1914, Christos born 1916, Nikolaos born 1919. No parents. No sisters.

I sent this to Gregory Kontos of GreekAncestry who confirmed they would be brothers. I inquired if perhaps both parents were deceased by 1955 which is why they were not listed, but we don’t know for sure. Gregory related that some older municipal registers simply listed the people, often siblings only.

Another fact which intrigued me was that no daughters of Efstratios were listed. Perhaps the record is incomplete; or, there were no daughters in the family; or if there were, the daughters had married and were living in other households. However, there are Dimotologion entries which list daughters in the family and provide the household registry number where they were living at the time the Dimotologion was compiled. So again, the answer is: there is no logical explanation as to why the record is incomplete.

These examples show the importance of researching every available record for your family so you can correlate information. That includes finding records for the children and siblings.

• In the Sparta Archives is the Male Register for Parori. I found Efstratios, the father of the five boys: Efstratios Ilias Goranitis born 1875 in Parori.

• The Sparta Marriage collection on MyHeritage has the marriage record of Efstratios:
  Metropolis of Sparta, Marriage Index
  Book: Sparta, 1907-1921; Page:  16; Year: 1908, Entries: 363-385
  Entry  #384
  License Date: November 8, 1908
  Marriage Date: November 9, 1908
  Groom:  Efstratios Goranitis of Parori
  Bride:  Aikaterini Mavroukakis of Kato Chora [Mystras], father: Georgios, Priest
  Church Name:  Agios Dimitrios
  First marriage for both bride and groom

Interestingly, the Goranitis boys’ maternal grandfather, Georgios Mavroukakis, was a priest in Kato Chora (Mystras) and both Damaskinos and Christos also became priests.

I will expand my research of the Goranitis family of Parori, because Efstratos’ father, Ilias Stratigis Goranitis, married my great grandaunt, Panagiota Papagiannakos.