Part 1: Minutia Tells The Story

 

Researching the Greek side of the family had always daunted me.  Thanks to my father George, our family is rich in oral, though sometimes, mythical history, and short on documented facts. Tracing a Hellenic background is rough going. First there’s a different alphabet leading to every spelling variation under the Sun because who is to say what is the right translation for a Greek letter that doesn’t exist in English?  Once the name was translated, inevitable variations of spelling, nicknames, or the option of full blown Anglo choices popped into play. I had to dig deep into the few factual details I already had and look directly at things like street directories and ship’s logs. After I realized this, I was finally able to cobble together my grandparents’ story. 

Pota, Pete, and friend Hain's Point 1919

Kicking off this ball of confusion, my grandmother and grandfather had the same first name. He was christened Panayoti, and she was Panayiota. Both literally translate into “all holy’- the Greek name for  Mary as in mother of Jesus. My Yiya could have been a rock star ahead of her time if she had gone with Madonna, but she defaulted to Mary in the 1920 census and was listed as “Porter” in 1930 which may have been a census taker error. I’ve also found old documents where she tried on Pauline and the unfathomable Bertha before finally sticking with Pota.  

My grandfather came to this country as Panos Kokinos and to the end of his life celebrated August 15th as his and his wife’s name day even though he chose Peter as his American name which is a translation for Petros not Panayota. 

My grandparents, like many immigrants, had a deep distrust of the government.

Their birth year often depended on who was mining the information. Pete gave different answers to the tax collector, the insurance agent, and the census taker.  Using the ten year variation option in Ancestry’s search engine was a must for me.  

Why the family adopted Cokinos instead of Kokkinos is lost to time. The letter "c" is not found in the Greek alphabet, but immigrants wanted to fit in, not stand out in their new country. Perhaps Cokinos with a C looked more American, but this is just a guess.

I started my research with my father’s stories. There were seven boys and three girls in the Cokinos family.  They were all born in a large house in a tiny village, spelled Agulnitsa or Agoulanitsa- near Olympia in the Peloponnese. Their names roughly translate to: Dionysios, Agamemnon, Vassilios, Adam, Andreas, Panos and Alekos. 

The girls were  Chryssa, Tessia and Evinia. According to my father four of the brothers stayed and farmed the olive groves while three, Peter, Aleck, and Adam went to college in Athens.  I am not sure about Aleck, but my father thought Pete worked in a bakery or perhaps went to confectionary school.  At the time all of the young men had to complete two years of mandatory military service by their twentieth birthdays. Here is a photo of Pete and Alec taken around 1900 in Greece. It's the second oldest photo of Pete.

Possibly Andreas, Pete and Aleck 

I decided to use the age listed on Pete's military papers as the earlier documents had to be more accurate. He was a sergeant in the Greek army in 1898, and a passport from 1927 confirmed his birthdate as 1877. Here is the oldest photo of Pete.

Panos Kokinos c1898

My father thought that each of the Cokinos children inherited a room in their family home in Agulnitsa which is now known as Epitalion  

It was a large house, but the village was small. At least four of the Cokinos brothers came to America, one sending for the next, as prospects grew better - just like the Russian brothers in the movie “Avalon.”  Like that family and most immigrant communities, they were a close knit group holding tightly to traditions and relying heavily on each other. Many planned to make their fortunes and return home again.  I always imagined my grandfather and his brothers packing a rucksack and riding out of Agulanitsa on a donkey or perhaps trudging on foot over the hills to the port of Patras. Singing might have been involved in my imagination. In my mind, they looked like this guy.

But this image of my grandfather is more likely.

I would come to realize the village had its own train station in 1905.  It's the size of a bus stop, but still a station nevertheless. This is what it looked like when I visited in 2004.

My grandfather most likely took a train to the ship that would bring him to America,