It all started with a photo from my grandmother’s album that no one could identify.
“Who are these people?” I had asked my mother some years ago. She looked at me quizzically. “Obviously he is sick, maybe seriously so, as several people are gathered around him,” I prompted. “Who in Greece would take a picture like this and send it to yiayia (my grandmother) unless it was important?” Still no response.
“There’s even writing on the back,” I persisted.
Mom turned over the photo and looked at the writing with a blank stare. She knew Greek well, but unexplainably struggled to decipher the script even though it was quite legible. Finally I put the picture away, not wanting to frustrate her further. A mystery sat unsolved for countless years, until just a few weeks ago.
While some may airily dismiss the expanding scope of internet genealogy and social networking sites, I have embraced this new technology as an inspired resource to find and connect with extended family. I don’t post often on my Facebook page, but I do use it to troll for potential tidbits of “genealogical gems.”
In late September, I hit a goldmine when, on a hunch, I typed the word “Mystra” in the FB search box. This is a village on the outskirts of Sparta where my maternal grandmother, Angelina Eftaxias Papagiannakos was born.
Can you imagine my shocked delight when the Facebook page Mystra appeared? A panoply of photos and commentaries captured my attention — some with Eftaxias family members. I realized, with sheer delight, that I had stumbled upon a host of cousins and extended family living in Canada, Greece and the U.S. As I looked closely at each picture, I found a face that looked very familiar — it was Nikki Kakaletris Eftaxias. Nikki had married my grandmother’s half-brother, John Eftaxias and they had one son, Andreas. (I know…it’s complicated!)
Gary and I had visited Mystra in 1996 and met Nikki and Andreas. We were enamored by these gentle and caring people who had welcomed us into their home and loved us as only family can.
With excitement and anticipation, I scanned and uploaded several of yiayia’s photos and was rewarded with immediate feedback. My newly found cousins recognized, identified and even corrected some pictures that were incorrectly captioned. They related previously unknown stories and anecdotes about my grandmother’s family. In return, I uploaded an Eftaxias ancestral chart which I had pieced together over years of research.
And yes — the mystery photo is now 4/5 identified! The man lying in bed is Andreas Eftaxias who has pneumonia. Surrounding him are members of his immediate family: (left-right) Aggeliki Vachaviolou, Tasia Chelidonis Eftaxias, Nikki Kakaletris Eftaxias. The woman in white is still to be named, but surely someone will come forth with her information. The caption on the back reads: 10/7/1956. In the photo there is aunt Tasia (Anastasia), who is a nurse, and us. See how bad we are because of (not sure about the name). Greetings from all of us.
Now I know why Mom could not identify these people. Except for Nikki, they were extended family whose faces she had never seen. Cameras were not extant in small Greek villages in the 1950’s, and photographs such as these were rare indeed.
As the Mystra FB page grows and more people “friend” us, our family circle will expand. I am now connected with many collateral-line relatives and two direct-line cousins: one second cousin, and one second cousin-once removed. We inherited genes, bloodlines and characteristics from our ancestors; we now share stories and life experiences in real time. Surely this treasure “in the cloud” is far more precious than any found in the earth.
Carol Kostakos Petranek is one of the Directors of the Washington DC Family History Center and a Volunteer at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
