We are excited to announce that Fotini Kaklamanou and her project, Kozani Genealogy from Panido and descendants, have been granted the 6th VHPI grant!

Through her blog and family tree, Fotini aims at preserving and highlighting the family history of her people, refugees from Panido, Eastern Thrace, who settled in the area of Kozani after the Greek-Turkish population exchange agreement of 1923. Fotini builds the trees of Panido families, collects old photographs and stories, and makes all these available to everyone interested. We are looking forward to assisting Fotini in her project in whatever way possible!

We urge everyone interested in their village genealogy and history to connect with our VHPI members or launch a project on their own, if their areas are not represented yet! Joining the VHPI is free and comes with privileges, such as the quarterly VHPI grant by Greek Ancestry and discounts on the Greek Ancestry website. To join us, click here. To see and access current VHPI projects, click here.

Follow the Records! - It is the bane of every family historian: sorting out men with the same name who lived in the same location at the same time, and sometimes married women who had the same given names. For Greek researchers, this issue is exacerbated due to naming traditions which almost always ensure that several men in a village -because they are named after their grandfather- have the identical baptismal name and surname. Fortunately, our naming traditions usually provide the father’s given name as well. Examples: Nikolaos Stamatakis, of Georgios (Νικόλαος Σταματάκης του Γεωργίου) and Nikolaos Stamatakis, of John (Νικόλαος Σταματάκης του Ιωάννου). We now know that the father of the first Nikolaos is Georgios and the second is John.

But what happens when we are searching in records where the father’s name is not given? This usually is the case in older documents, such as the 1844 or 1872 Voter Lists. One research strategy is to look at the ages of the men as a means of differentiation, but we already know that Greek ages can be notoriously inaccurate and many years off. Another strategy is to pinpoint an exact location, but what about families who moved between villages? Or the cases when a man married a woman, moved to her village and took HER surname thus losing his surname and becoming a “xxx…gamvros” (unusual, but we do see this in names like Stratigamvros). And to all this, let’s throw in the real possibility of clerical errors, or even misinformation given by the informant. What then? I was faced with this exact situation, and the solution is outlined here. 

Resources from the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Website - What is the most popular tool on the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Resource Links website? The Greek Document Locator tools Part 1 & 2, which not only explain what types of genealogical records are available and what information they include, but also point to the relevant physical and online repositories!

You can download the files in PDF format by clicking here! Good luck with your research!