Category Archives: Genealogy

Memory Eternal: Georgia Stryker Keilman

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My dear friend and Greek genealogy colleague, Georgia Stryker Keilman, left earth suddenly and unexpectedly on January 5, 2025. Over the past fifteen years, we have collaborated and planned and worked together on many projects and initiatives to benefit our worldwide Hellenic genealogy community. We encouraged each other to keep moving forward on both our personal research, and on our individual and joint efforts to help people of Greek descent learn how to find their ancestral families. Words cannot describe my intense feelings of loss.

Georgia was a pioneer in the Greek genealogy community. On April 16, 2010, when Facebook was in its infancy, she conceptualized a group with a two-fold mission: a place where she could share information about Greek genealogy, and a forum where Greeks worldwide could help each other with their genealogy research. Her Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook group is now the meeting place for our community with an astounding 45,800 members (as of this date)!

But Georgia did not stop there. She created a companion Hellenic Genealogy Geek Blog which gave her a narrative format to write about print, photographic and online resources. In 2012, Georgia discovered that Election Registers for the years 1872-1873 were online at the General State Archives of Greece website. She downloaded hundreds of pages and began transcribing the names from Greek into English. She published these lists on her blog and printed them in books, thus creating what most likely is the first online-accessible indexed records of Greek names on both the internet and in print.

The community’s enthusiastic response to Georgia’s work encouraged her to keep going. Her number of translated lists grew rapidly.

Georgia continued this work for several years, completing translations for the astounding number of 253 villages! She reluctantly “retired” from this project only when our friend, Gregory Kontos founded GreekAncestry.net. Georgia’s lists are still in use and remain online here. Their organization by village makes them especially useful, allowing researchers to easily identify family surnames specific to each village.

In 2021, Georgia felt it would be helpful for the community to have a website of Greek research links–a “one stop shop” of sorts, where people interested in a specific topic could find information without having to spend hours surfing the web. That’s when Hellenic Genealogy Geek Research Links was created. Our conversations for weeks centered on this project. Georgia spent countless hours combing through both the web and her personal data collections to compile and organize thousands of online links.

In addition to the Facebook group and her two websites, Georgia helped organize the first-ever in-person Greek genealogy conferences in the United States: April 2015 at Holy Trinity Cathedral Ballroom in New York City with Ilias Katsos and the Education and Culture Committee of the Hellenic American Chamber of Commerce; and September 2015 at the Hellenic Memorial Building at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Salt Lake City with the Hellenic Cultural Association and the Ethnic and Mining Museum of Magna, Utah. She and I worked together and rejoiced together at these historic events which enabled diaspora Greeks to meet, learn and share their passion for genealogy.

Georgia’s friendship with Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry was priceless–filled with humor, mutual appreciation and respect. She so enjoyed working with him to plan and organize Greek genealogy conferences and webinars; and to coordinate the first-ever podcast for Greek genealogy, “G(r)eek Talk.” Georgia’s analytical mind always predominated in these planning sessions, and we were confident that she would find any “hole” or missing piece in whatever was being considered. And she always did!

The most recent initiative that Georgia and I completed together was the video series, “Bite-Sized Greek Genealogy.” We noticed that new members of HGG were asking the same questions and decided that brief recordings would be an effective way to provide answers. We brainstormed topics and ideas, found relevant materials, and had many laughs in creating the series. When it was finished, Georgia suggested that we create a companion booklet which would contain the talking points of our videos as well as additional information and online links. She was always seeking ways to make something good even better.

These initiatives were on top of Georgia’s daily tasks: to administer the ever-growing HGG Facebook group, to continue to locate and publish information for her websites, and to work on her own personal research. The project of most importance to her personally was “Your Greek Roots,” a family history book she wrote in 2019. Dedicated to her nieces and nephews, it represents Georgia’s desire to ensure that her closest family members understand their heritage and never forget their roots. I can testify that compiling this book and contemplating its importance to her family brought Georgia immense joy.

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” ~ Aristotle [Nicomachean Ethics]

Georgia’s intentions, efforts and choices led to her to devote this stage of her life to helping others. This is her legacy and for it, she will remain highly respected, deeply loved and forever missed.

Please see this wonderful article about Georgia which was published in NeosKosmos on February 26, 2018.

OBITUARY

Georgia Stryker Keilman, aged 74, passed away peacefully at her home on January 5, 2025, in Mount Prospect, Illinois. She is survived by her brothers, Tom and Peter, as well as her adult nieces and nephews: Alexandra (Daniel), Christine, Christopher (Lindsey), Steven (Kellie), George, Michael, Katherine (Zar), and Sergio. Georgia was also a devoted great-aunt to her beloved grand-nephews and nieces: Elijah, Isaac, Maddie, Evelyn, Jack, and Nina.

Born as Georgia Ann Stryker, she was the eldest daughter of Ann and George Stryker of Chicago, Illinois. Georgia’s warm personality and adventurous spirit shaped her remarkable life. She pursued a successful career as Director of International Marketing in the medical device industry, which afforded her opportunities to travel extensively. During her career, she lived in Boston, Massachusetts; Sydney, Australia; and Athens, Greece, before ultimately returning to the Chicago area to be near her family.

Georgia had a deep love for her family, a keen talent for research, and a genuine curiosity that inspired her to embark on a meticulous investigation into her family’s Greek genealogy. In 2009, she founded the online community “Hellenic Genealogy Geek,” a platform dedicated to sharing and exploring Greek ancestry. This community, which began as a passion project, eventually grew to include over 45,000 members from around the world. Georgia found immense joy and purpose in connecting Greeks in the diaspora with their familial heritage and ancestral roots.

Her contributions to the Hellenic Genealogy community are considered her life’s work. Georgia’s dedication to assisting people worldwide in uncovering and cherishing their family legacies is a lasting testament to her generous and inquisitive spirit.

Georgia will be deeply missed and lovingly remembered by her friends, family, and the global community she nurtured. A private family gathering will be held in her honor. Additionally, condolences and prayers from her online community will be shared at a memorial event hosted virtually.

For those wishing to make a donation in Georgia’s memory, contributions can be made to support the archives of rural Greek villages via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/100001113949069/posts/8921917944521915/.

To learn more about the Hellenic Genealogy Geek community, please visit:

Genealogy Tourism in Sparta

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Dear Friends,

On Tuesday, September 3 at 6:00 p.m., I have been invited to give a presentation in Sparta, Greece on “Genealogy Tourism” (see news article here). My cousin, Georgios Kostakos, recently organized Sparta.Komvos, a group that hosts a variety of speakers and events that both educate and interest youth and modern Spartans.

Georgios asked if I could talk about the work I have been doing for many years with Spartan genealogy research. As I considered what could be of interest for this audience, I decided to help them understand the concept of Heritage Travel, or Diaspora Travel, or Genealogy Tourism — whichever term is used — and the opportunities it can bring. Businesses, artisans, shop owners and the hospitality industry could reap significant benefits by welcoming family historians.

We are a niche group with specific needs and expectations when we travel to visit our ancestral land. We want to find living cousins, go to the archives and research, understand our heritage, immerse ourselves in culture, and “walk where our ancestors walked.” Going to the beach and touring ancient ruins is a side note, not the purpose of our visit. I think it would be helpful for the Spartan community understand this type of tourism, and how they can prepare to help us researchers when we visit. The benefits that will come to them could be significant.

If you have suggestions to share with me that I can share with this group, I would love to hear from you. Please, send me a message and I will pass along your thoughts.

I’ll let you know how the event is received. Wish me luck! 🙂

New Video Series: Bite-Sized Greek Genealogy

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My colleague, Georgia Stryker Keilman of Hellenic Genealogy Geek and I have embarked on a new venture: a series of short videos to address the most common research questions that people ask. Each video will address a specific topic and have an accompanying handout.

“Bite-Sized Greek Genealogy” videos are being produced and uploaded to the Hellenic Genealogy Geek YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HellenicGenealogyGeek-sp4pf

Our first videos are available now. The first is “Tips about Names and Villages” with information that we wish we had known when we started our research.

The second is “How to Find Your Grandfather’s Greek Name” which shows a wide variety of records that will give you this information. Trying to find ancestors in Greece without the original Greek surname is virtually impossible.

The third is “How to Find Your Ancestor’s Village of Birth.” This can be tricky, as many people gave just a county (prefecture) or the nearest city, rather than their exact village.

Be sure to download the handout for each video, which can be found in the Description area below the video.

We will be announcing more recordings over the next few weeks. We hope they will be helpful to you!

Verify All the Names: A Case Study

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The church marriage record was clear: Theodoros Dimitrios Kouris married Dimitroula Chatzakou, daughter of Ioannis, first marriage for both, on April 24, 1875:

Finding this record [1] for one of my Agios Ioannis families meant that I now had the name of Theodoros’ wife and the mother of his children. Everything seemed to line up:  the wedding was in 1875 and the first child was born in October 1878, although the birth (if it was a first birth) was a tad late for that time period. I entered the information in my database and to online trees at FamilySearch, Ancestry and MyHeritage. Almost immediately, hints for records in Massachusetts popped up for the children. Not unusual – many families immigrated to America in the early 1900s. I checked one of the hints, a marriage record for son Apostolos, and noted with curiosity that his mother’s name was written not as Chatzakou, but as Pantazou.

Well, the two surnames sort of sound alike. I wondered if this was a clerical error (misunderstood the name?) or a mistake on the part of the child (some are unsure of their mother’s maiden name!).

Checking further, I saw that the Pantazou surname in U.S. records was found for other children in the family. Clearly, there was a disconnect somewhere.

Because this family is not related to me, I was not planning to research this line further. (My goal is to get the Greek records online so that descendants can make the leap from the U.S. to Greece). But I felt it was important to alert other researchers to the discrepancy, so I added this note in the profiles for both Theodoros and Dimitroula: Dimitroula’s surname, according to her Sparta marriage record, is Chatzakou. However, there are records in the U.S. giving her surname as Pantazou. Either there are two Theodoros Kouris’ in Massachusetts — one married to Chatzakou and one to Pantazou, OR her surname changed in the U.S.

Before moving on to extract another family name from Agios Ioannis records, I did make one additional entry for Theodoros: I marked him as deceased and in the place field, I put “Of Massachusetts, United States.” The word “of” signifies that this was a guess, as I did not have proof of the fact.

This entry proved to be a mistake for me and a red flag for Theodoros’ geat-granddaughter , Niki, who had been researching her family and found my note in an online tree. In an email to me, she wrote:

I want to clarify another piece that you aren’t aware of. Theodore never came to the US. His wife and all of their children came around 1909….except for Nikoletta, who stayed back to care for her father, Theodore, who was blind, and unable to travel at that time. In 1920, Dimitroula returned to Agios Ioannis and planned to travel with Theodore and Nikoletta back to Boston, to join the rest of the family…However, Theodore died unexpectedly, very shortly before they were scheduled to sail. Dimitroula and Nikoletta came without him, in the summer of 1920. The ship record shows only their two names. So you might want to modify your note about Dimitroula’s surname discrepancy since Theodore was never in the United States.

Oh my! Grateful for this clarification, I quickly corrected Theodoros’ death place to Agios Ioannis.

Niki had initially contacted me a few weeks ago when she found the marriage for Theodoros and Dimitroula Chatzakou online at MyHeritage[1]. She knew her great-grandmother was Dimitroula Pantazos, and the record naming Chatzakou was mystifying. Looking further and searching on “Pantazos,” she found and then sent me another marriage record which was indexed as: Theodoros D. Kontis and Dimitroula Pantazos, daughter of Anast., married October 29, 1876. She commented: “Could it be that the handwritten record from 1876 was translated incorrectly, into Kontis instead of Kouris?”

We outlined the issues:

  1. The handwritten Greek in both marriage records was too scribbly for either of us to clarify whether the name was Kouris or Kontis.
  2. This second marriage record shows it was Theodoros’ second marriage [B] and Dimitroula Pantazou’s first marriage [A].
  3. Their marriage occurred in October 1876, exactly 18 months after Theodoros’ marriage in April 1875.
  4. If this record was indeed for Theodoros Kouris, then his first wife [Chatzakou] would have died shortly after marriage [perhaps in childbirth?].
  5. With Georgios born in October 1878, he and his siblings would be the children of Theodoros’ second wife, Pantazou–making the 1878, exactly two years aftermarriage, birth more realistic for the times.

Clearly, the answer lay in the clarification of Theodoros’ surname. A quick message to Gregory Kontos at GreekAncestry resolved the mystery: both marriage records were for Theodoros Kouris; the second record was transcribed incorrectly.

A few points to consider from this case study:

  1. NEVER trust a name index!
  2. ALWAYS review the original record. If it’s in Greek and unreadable to you, someone else can help. Upload to the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook page or send to Greg Kontos at GreekAncestry.
  3. Search a variety of records to verify information. In this situation, looking at U.S. records for several of Theodoros’ children revealed the same mother’s name. This raised the chances that the children were correct, and the possibility that there was either an error in the marriage record or a second marriage for Theodore.
  4. Document facts that don’t correlate, and make sure those notes are attached to each individual that is affected.
  5. If you are making an assumption, state what the assumption is and why you are making it. I did not do this for Theodoros’ death place when I listed it as Massachusetts.
  6. Theodoros had two wives with the same first name, which caused incorrect assumptions. The children’s baptismal records in the village church book gave their mother’s name as only Dimitroula (no surname) which caused me to assume that the Chatzakou record was correct.
  7. Niki kept looking for information and changed her search terms to “Pantazos” which led her to finding her great-grandparents’ marriage record and the incorrect transcription of Theodoros’ surname. If she had not kept looking, the mystery would have remained.
  8. Just because “this is the way it was” don’t assume that is true in your situation. I assumed that Theodoros had come to the U.S. with (or before) his children, which was the pattern for Greek men at the turn of the century. In this case, that was not the case. The mother came with the children, and the father remained in the village–a complete reversal of the norm.
Family of Theodoros Kouris and Dimitroula Pantazou, about 1902
Anna, Theodoros, possibly Anastasios (standing), Nikoletta, Dimitroula Pantazou, possibly Harry

[1] See Sparta Marriages 1835-1935 online at MyHeritage.com

Mystras – 1872 Election Registers

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Among the oldest records of genealogical value in the modern Greek state are the Election Registers of 1844 and 1872, which are lists of men eligible to vote. These records are now name indexed and available online (1844 at GreekAncestry.net; 1872-3 at MyHeritage). These Registers are critical for identifying which families resided in specific villages at specific points in time. In 2012, long before these records were name indexed and posted online, Georgia Stryker Keilman undertook the task of translating these registers from many villages in the Peloponnese, and her work can be found here.

I have Eftaxias ancestors from Mystras, which sent me to the 1872 Election Registers for that village. Mystras had been the seat of Byzantium in the Peloponnese until overtaken by Ottoman Rule. After the Greek Revolution for Independence, the population of Mystras began to decline as people descended from the castle area on the mountain top. Some formed the village of Mystras in the valley while others relocated to the emerging city of modern Sparta.

Mystras, Looking Towards Sparta, ca. 1890-1910. Library of Congress

When the Election Registers of 1872 were created, a man had to be at least 21 years old to vote. The number of men in Mystras on the election list was 268 and their average age was 38 years.

The “new” village of Mystras needed a mix of tradesmen, laborers, landowners and professionals to meet the needs of its population. The chart below, which lists the occupations of the voters, reveals that the village had the requisite composition to support its residents.

occupationnumber
Baker7
Bailiff17
Bricklayer1
Butcher4
Clerk3
Coachman/driver1
Cobbler4
Coffee seller2
Court official1
Doctor2
Farmer27
Farrier1
Gardener10
Gendarme4
Grocer12
Laborer30
Landowner53
Lawyer1
Magistrate2
Mason2
Mayor1
Merchant3
Mule driver7
Unemployed2
Official / Clerk3
Pharmacist1
Police Inspector1
Quilt Maker1
Rag Seller2
Retailer1
Sandal Maker3
Servant7
Shepherd23
Shoemaker1
Soldier7
Student10
Superintendent1
Surgeon1
Tailor4
Trader1
Veteran1
Wine Sales2

Which families are found in the village during this time? This chart lists the names of the voters, their ages and occupations in alphabetical order. Some surnames have “disappeared” over time, but many are found in Mystras today.

1872 Election Register, Mystras

This is the Register in Greek.

1872 Election Register, Mystras, in Greek

My great-grandfather, Konstantinos Eftaxias, is found on line 573. This Register gave me his father’s name, Ioannis, and his occupation as a shepherd. Also listed are Georgios, who were identified in the 1873 Election Register as being the son of Ioannis.

1873: Line 537, Georg. Eftaxias, age 25, father: Ioannis; occupation: student
1873: Line 597, Dimitr. Eftaxias, age 27, no father listed; occupation: shepherd

Although the father of Dimitrios is not listed, further research indicated that there was only one Eftaxias family in Mystras during this period.These Eftaxias examples show the importance of trying to find your ancestors in every available record.