Part 2: James and Pete Arrive in DC (1906)

Adam Cokinos

My father always told me that Pete’s older brother Adam came first after opening a candy store on the corner of Ninth and K Street NW. I found both brothers listed in the 1910 census, but Adam reported that he got here in 1906 (a year after Pete) and, in the 1920 census, Adam inexplicably changed that answer to 1908 leaving me unsure about everything.

I also remembered my father saying that Papou eventually sold his candy shop to his cousin James Cokinos. While searching old newspapers for all things Cokinos, I found James’s very informative obituary. He arrived in America in 1902 when he was twenty two years old, and first went to Wilmington, Delaware to make his start in the candy business.  He moved to Washington DC by 1906. 

Like most Greek immigrants back then, all of our family came through Ellis Island. The Ellis Island Foundation offers ship manifests with basic information.  I found that a “Panos Koinos” came on the steamship Georgia on October 7, 1905.  I needed to see the original document so I could view possible transcription errors.

I took these clues back to the Ancestry site. Here I could look up a ship’s manifest by its date, and go through the records page by page. It was worth it. I found my Panos, and a trove of little details about his journey. First off- the bad handwriting did look more like Panos Kokinos than the “Koinos” as someone else had transcribed. Also this Panos reported his last residence as Agulnitsa which gave me reassurance that this was indeed my grandfather.

I learned from the ship’s log that Panos came with a friend named Giovanni, and that their destination was not Washington, DC but Wilmington, Delaware- exactly where James Cokinos had started life in America.

Other details were more confusing than enlightening. Panos was going to live with his “son in law” Andrea with an illegible last name (Chenfrotis?) on Market Street in Wilmington. Panos, who listed his age as 27, seemed a tad young to have a son-in-law.  Giovanni, also from Agulnitsa, was going to live with Andrea, too. He listed Andrea as a friend in the manifest.  Both men were listed as pastry cooks.  

I pored over Wilmington’s street directories, and couldn’t find any listings for Cokinos, but I did see a lot of Greek confectioners listed in Wilmington in the early 1900s. Greek owned confectionery businesses were definitely a thing.

I am not sure when or why James moved to DC, but I found a tiny announcement in the Washington Post on July 28, 1906 stating that Louis Pappas Paleologos was selling his candy business at 721 8th Street to James Cokinos. Wow. This is the oldest record showing our family’s arrival in Washington and the new spelling of Kokinos with a "C." Looks like my grandfather was the first of his brothers to come here after all.