Greek Americans

Among the Pioneers

Greeks can trace their presence on American soil back to 1528. It was then that the sailor and ship caulker Don Teodoro or Theodoros, who participated in the Panfilio de Narvaez expedition, offered himself as a hostage to the Native Americans and went ashore. Another plausible, but not fully proven theory, underlines the Greek origin of the famous Spanish admiral and explorer Juan de Fuca. De Fuca gave his name to the strait that he explored in 1592 located between Vancouver Island, in Canada, and Washington State, in the United States. Following this theory, de Fuca, tracing his lineage to the famous Foka Byzantine family, had been born in Greece on the island of Cefalonia.

The first organized Greek attempt to migrate in America is noted in 1768 and the ill-fated New Smyrna colony in Florida. The Scottish doctor Andrew Turnbull and his Greek wife Maria Gracia Rubini, born in Smyrna in Asia Minor, were among the 1,400 colonizers, 500 of whom were Greeks from the arid region of Mani in the Peloponnese. Though the majority of the colonizers were decimated because of famine and horrible work conditions of indentured labor, the Greeks who managed to survive were incorporated in the Saint Augustine community.

The Early Nineteenth Century

In 1821, Americans proved their love for ancient Greece and its culture by actively supporting the Greek War of Independence. They held fund-raisers, sent supplies, and even enlisted. In this spirit of philhellenism, that is, love for anything Greek, 40 war orphans were brought to the United States to be educated and returned to Greece to help its development. Among them were important figures in Greek history like Christodoulos [Page 1001]Evangelides, founder of an American-style school in Asian Minor, and Alexander Paspatis, prominent Byzantine scholar. The mid-century saw the advent of more Greeks, mainly sailors and merchants. The latter were involved in the import and export businesses in key port cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, Savannah, and Galveston. A few years later, in 1864, the first Orthodox church in New Orleans was built, the Holy Trinity.

Mass Migration

The Greek mass migration mainly refers to the period between 1890 and 1924. In the beginning, the immigrants were mostly male. Raised in a strict patriarchal milieu, Greeks left their homeland, driven away by poverty, squalor, and the successive wars of the expanding Greek state. Destitute Greek men were intrigued by the economic possibilities of America, the vastness of the country, and the stories they heard. Apart from those who had lost their homelands through war (like the Greeks of Asia Minor in the beginning of the 20th century), most of the Greek migrants intended to return and enjoy the fruist of their labors with their loved ones. The love and duty toward one's family, sisters, and daughters, waiting for their dowries so as to marry well, were frequently the central reasons fueling the migratory movement. As soon as the newcomers realized they would be staying longer in America, women started joining them: sisters, wives, daughters, and mail-order brides.

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