Migration
~ The Migration to America ~
Peter Jeffreys
For many Greeks at the turn of the century, the allure of starting a new life abroad proved nearly irresistible. Poverty was often the great determining factor, but the appeal of the “American Dream” remained the overarching impetus that beckoned to so many immigrants regardless of their economic predicament. The agricultural failure of the currant crop in the Peloponnese in 1893—the sole national export of Greece prior to its replacement by olives in the 20th century1—affected many families, and the Soliotis family had been invested in the cultivation and export of currants from the early 19th century.2
For Nikolaos Ch. Soliotis and his wife Vassiliki, the desire to migrate was less a matter of financial straits than politics, the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and World War One having played a decisive role. Their families were very connected to the royal court of King George and Queen Olga. Vassiliki, the daughter of the military officer Athanasios N. Petimezas, grew up surrounded by luxury in the Petimezas archontiko (manor house) in Kalavryta3 and her extended family held important political positions that gave them powerful connections both at the royal court and within the Greek government.
Vassiliki’s husband Nikolaos was an accomplished physician4 who practiced medicine in the region of Kalavryta, living at various stages of his career in that town and later in the neighboring village of Kertezi.5 From surviving accounts, he was generous with his time and medical advice, preferring the simple life of a country doctor to a more lucrative situation in Athens.6 He turned down positions as the chief physician of a transatlantic steamship company and as a doctor at the Athens Ippocrateion General Hospital and opted not to remain at the royal court in Athens where he served for a time as the personal physician to King George. Owing to the political prestige of the Petimezas family—Nikolaos’s mother was Maria Petimezas, the daughter of Golfinos–the couple’s eldest daughter Marika attended Queen Olga at the royal court as one of her ladies in waiting.7
The tense political climate that ultimately led to the national political schism between the Royalists and Venizelists8 that tore Greece apart in the early decades of the 20th century surely entered into the family’s decision to migrate.9 The assassination of King George in 1913 and the unmistakable rumblings of war that followed led the family to embark on their journey to America in May of 1914. With money given to her by Queen Olga and by selling her jewelry to fund the voyage, Vassiliki took three of her nine children—Marika, Electra and Spyros—and sailed from Patras to New York on the steamship The SS Franconia. Although her husband is registered on the ship’s passenger list, oral family accounts maintain that Nikolaos in fact remained in Greece and that Vassiliki was accompanied instead by her brother Nikolaos Petimezas.10
The family initially settled in the towns of Chicopee and Holyoke in western Massachusetts. Seven years later in May 1921,11 two more children—Julia and Athena—boarded the steamship The SS Megali Ellas12 to join their mother and siblings in America. The doctor stayed in Greece with his children Charalambos (Lambis), Christos, Andromachi and Andreas. At some point Nikolaos’s younger brother Efstathios migrated and settled variously in the New Hampshire cities of Nashua, Portsmouth, and Manchester.13 He is listed as a signatory of a letter to the Nashua Telegraph in 1915 along with thirteen other Greek mill workers explaining his participation in a labor strike (see the article in the gallery below). The Soliotis siblings would eventually spread out to settle in Nashua (New Hampshire), Newport (Rhode Island), Boston and Pittsfield (Massachusetts), and Albany (New York).
Life in America proved challenging, accustomed as the family was to their previous aristocratic social status and economic comforts. During the early years of their sojourn, the family members worked at menial jobs either in factories or in low-paying positions owing to the language barrier and the limited opportunities available to immigrants during this period. Vassiliki had four daughters and a son for whom she had to find respectable marriage candidates, and her priority was to arrange lucrative matches. True to her military pedigree, she ruled with an iron fist and did her best to set up her children in their new lives. She would return to Greece sometime in the 1930s and died of a stroke in Kertezi14 in the latter part of the decade.
The gamble taken by Nikolaos and Vassiliki, born of political turmoil and the promise of a new world, undeniably paid off. Their journey, though fraught with sacrifice and hardship, laid the foundation for a vibrant future in America. While the first generation labored to achieve financial stability largely by opening restaurants and working in hospitality, the second, third and fourth generations quickly moved up the economic ladder to establish careers in the diplomatic service, the military, the medical and legal professions, finance, and academia. The genealogical tree traces the marriages and offspring of the nine children of Nikolaos and Vassiliki. Today their descendants are spread across the eastern United States and hold a deep-seated pride in the decisive roles played by the Soliotis and Petimezas families in the events of the Greek Revolution and in the establishment of the Greek Nation. They are a testament to the resilience and determination of those who crossed the ocean and made a difficult decision that ultimately created unimagined opportunities in their new homeland.
Notes
1 See Η Ιστορία της Σταφίδας/The History of Corinthian Currant by Christos Moulias et al. (Athens: Ephesos Publishing, 2006) for an excellent overview of this topic. The crisis came about as a result of the opening of the French market, overproduction, and the Greek government’s lack of a comprehensive currant policy, all of which were compounded by Greece’s declaration of bankruptcy in December 1893 (Moulias, 121-123).
2 See the letters from Zaimis to Londos in the “Manuscript” section that recount the dire straits of Nikolaos and his brothers during an earlier crop failure in 1819 when the family was unable to repay a loan and nearly went to prison.
3 This dwelling was destroyed by the Germans in 1943 and remained in a state of ruin until it was totally demolished when the property was sold and redeveloped in the early 2010s (see the photos in the Marriages section/ Petimezas Family). Sadly, this building was not properly documented, given that it was not only an architectural masterpiece but also a major residence of the Petimezas family, having been visited by the Greek monarchs and prime ministers. Next to the Petimezas Pyrgos in Soudena/Kato Lousi, this was the seat of the family’s political activity. The adjacent family chapel of the Holy Trinity still exists and has been donated to the municipality of Kalavryta.
4 See his medical diploma in the “Family Heirlooms” section of the website. He graduated from the University of Athens in 1885 with a degree in medicine.
5 The doctor and his remaining children lived in the house of the Giannopoulos family—his daughter Marika having married Theodore Giannopoulos.
6 Vasso (Solioti) Papasyriopoulou recalls a conversation with a monk from the Agia Lavra Monastery who recounted how the doctor would administer to the monks of the monastery and to the people of the surrounding villages without taking money, offering his holistic remedies of herbs and natural cures. He was reputedly a very humble and unassuming physician and beloved of the local populace.
7 There were previous female members of the Petimezas family who served as ladies in waiting in Queen Amalia’s court although, regrettably, the records of these positions were not thoroughly documented in Greece and remain incomplete.
8 Eleftherios Venizelos served as the prime minister of Greece intermittently throughout the early 20th century and was in constant conflict with King Constantine whose followers his party regularly persecuted when in power. The same was true of the royalists who were equally oppressive of the Venizelists.
9 The political climate in Greece was such that reprisals against supporters of the monarchy by the Venizelist administration often resulted in both violence and persecution.
10 It is quite possible that Nikolaos Petimezas passed himself off as Nikolaos Soilotis to accompany his sister to the United States.
11 This date may also have been prompted by the political situation in Asia Minor and the looming catastrophe that would occur with the burning of Smyrna in August 1921–another reason to leave a country about to sink into defeat and turmoil.
12 Coincidentally, Spyros Soliotis (Peter Salis) will marry Helen Koutoulakis whose family migrated from Archanes, Crete to New York on this same stream ship in September 1921, four months after her future sisters-in-law had made the same journey.
13 Efstathios was well educated and had written for the student journal Ethniki Elpis in 1892 when he was studying at the University of Athens (see the “In the Press” section for this document). His later plight as an exploited mill worker was a common story for Greek immigrants. He died in 1934 and is buried at the Pine Grove Cemetery in New Hampshire.
14According to Vasso Papasyriopoulou, Vassiliki died after suffering a stroke while conducting a bank transaction in Kalavryta. Her husband predeceased her @1935. Both are buried in the Soliotis/Petimezas gravesite in Kalavryta.
