by Tasos Kon. Frangis published in the Faris Newsletter, Issue #77, December 2023, pages 20-21
In the previous issue of our newspaper, we devoted a few pages from the Spartan Journal of 1900, an annual publication with information, studies, statistics, and other topics about the Province of Lacedaemonia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, it constitutes an important source for historical research.
In the brief introduction to that article, we promised to return for a further examination, a reflection on the “Products” chapter, which contains information on the agricultural activity, about which, admittedly, we knew little.
So, let’s look again at what the farmers produced in those times. The main products were: oil, citrus fruits, silk, grain, wine, figs, and legumes. Annual average production:
olive oil, 2,000,000 okades1, the majority of which was exported;
citrus fruits, 10-12,000,000 oranges and 1,000,000 mandarins, most of which were destined for the Russian markets;
silk, 50,000 okades of dry cocoons and 200,000 okades of fresh cocoons;
cereals, 5,500,000 okades, enough for local consumption for six months;
wine, approximately 1,700,000 okades;
figs, 160,000 okades;
legumes, 50,000 okades.
In smaller quantities,
In smaller quantities, they also produced walnuts, chestnuts, etc.
2018 display of the silk industry in Sparta, created by the Lakonia office of the General State Archives of Greece; photo by Carol Kostakos Petranek
Since then, approximately 120 years later, within the boundaries of the-then Province of Lacedaemonia, the production of olive oil and edible olives remains, along with small quantities of citrus fruits, vegetables, and wine.
The remaining cultivations vanished, and how could it be otherwise? After so many years, migration and urbanization stripped the countryside and enlarged the big urban centers. So, we have arrived at the present day where discussions about the future of agricultural production take place under complex conditions and the threat of the present climate crisis. Already, there are numerous signs predicting difficulties and significant problems.
The circles of discussions, analysis, and ideas are divided. Some turn to the search for a new model, while others, who have observed for years the dysfunction of the current model, join with those who call for the revival of traditional cultivations… Example: the Peloponnese Region has already decided to implement a pilot program to produce first quality silk on 30 hectares in each of the regional units of Laconia, Messenia, and Arcadia.
For this purpose, in uncultivated and riverbank areas along the Eurotas and Pamisos Rivers, four to five farmers will be selected and properly trained. During the implementation of the program, the Region will ensure the distribution of the product and a satisfactory income to the producers. Since the sericulture activity is recognized as environmentally friendly, no kind of environmental permit is required. Also, no planning permit is required for the construction of rearing chambers, warehouses, etc.
The contributors to the project are optimistic about its success, as the demand for the product is high both in the domestic market and in the European Union. “Faris” requested the opinion of our fellow citizens, who have been involved in the textile and fashion industry for a long time, regarding the feasibility of the program. They told us that “such an enterprise would only fail due to mismanagement”…
I (Carol Kostakos Petranek) am honored to receive permission from the Katsoulakos family to translate and share articles from The Faris. Translation verification and corrections have been made by GreekAncestry.net. This is the fifteenth article of the ongoing series. Previous articles can be viewed here.
Oka / okades is a former unit of weight in Turkey and neighboring countries, equal to about 2.75 pounds (1.25 kilograms) ↩︎
Two articles published in our journal concern the medical practices that were applied and pharmaceutical means available to our compatriots in the past. Specifically, they refer to the era of the great uprising of 1821 and the time of the 1918 flu (see Stavros Th. Kalkanis, “Empirical doctors and medical practices in our region – and elsewhere – in ’21”, Faris 68 (2018) 3-6, and “The Spanish flu of 1918 as experienced (?) by a family in Goranoi”, Faris 73 (2020) 5-8.
Injuries in 1821 were treated with amputations and improvised poultices, while the 1918 flu, which wiped out entire families in our villages, was dealt with by our compatriots (and the entire world) with a little quinine and whitewashing of houses.
Similar was the treatment of the problems that our compatriots had with their teeth up to the middle of the past century. They used improvised “remedies” (or concoctions), which were essentially herbal remedies from the region. Unfortunately, these dealt with pain and other dental problems in a rudimentary way. They usually resulted in painful tooth extractions.
Our compatriots of today – especially the young – do not know or can hardly imagine the conditions, the means and possibilities of treatment but also the usual outcome of dental problems until the beginning of – at least – the past century.
Medicines and extractions were usually applied or carried out by elderly village women, and men or women who had the reputation of experienced and skilled “specialists”. They were the so-called “good doctors” of the teeth or “kompogiannites”, in other words empirical doctors who lacked the primary knowledge and the tools or materials available today.
The herbs (or botanicals or drugs) were placed on the gums of the aching tooth (after being crushed in oil or dried and ground into powder) or were soaked in water for days (compresses) or dissolved in boiling water (extracts) or in alcohol (tincture)…
With these, they made gargles, pads, or compresses, but some were swallowed (pills). Almost always, however, they started with tsipouro and olive oil, which they gargled for a long time to alleviate the pain. When the tsipouro was swallowed, it naturally acted as a “dizzying” substance… However, there was always the question – and the concern – of dosage or possible toxicity.
We have gathered information and memories from our wider region and documented the most common herbal remedies from our land, as well as their common uses and actions. Some of these were:
• anise (as powder or toothpaste or by chewing seeds, as decoction, extract, compress, essential oil, …for loose teeth and gums, tonic), lavender (as a decoction for toothache relief or as a tooth fixative…), orange (as an oil for calming effect / relaxation…)
• nettle (crushed, dried or boiled as a compress or wash and as a decoction to stop bleeding of the gums…), honeysuckle (as an ointment or poultice or gargle against toothache but also as a remedy for bad breath…), mulberry (as a thick decoction of its leaves for gargle against tooth and gum pain…)
• cloves -mainly, thyme, ginger, and marjoram (as a toothpaste, as a powder or mashed ointment for compresses, as crushed oil, as infusions or extracts…against tooth pain and breath freshening,… and as antiseptic, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory…)
• mint, spearmint, and pennyroyal-which are related plants- (as ointments in compresses and poultices, as extracts and essences, oils, patches of their fresh leaves…, for aroma, antiseptics…)
The women from our villages usually undertook the collection, processing, and administering of the above-mentioned medicines. The names of most of the men or women in our area who had these capabilities have unfortunately been lost or are only maintained in the memory of their family members. With this note, we preserve the name of Stavroula Sourtzi (née Stratakou, originating from Goranoi) who died bedridden in Xirokampi. Her daughter, Ourania Panteli Frangi, who lived in Xirokampi (and her later years in Canada), has narrated and written that many who collected some of the herbs we mentioned would give them to her mother for processing.
However, even then – and now for those who still use them – special attention should (and must be) paid to their dosage or toxicity. Especially today with the existence of sprays and pesticides. Herbs are not a panacea.
Rarely in the past did our compatriots take care of their teeth as long as they did not have problems. One of the practices they used to take care of them was chewing the ends of thin twigs, or roots of some of the plants mentioned above, that were easy to find. By chewing these, they created tassels that facilitated cleaning the teeth and prevented plaque buildup.
A more drastic method was the use of improvised “toothbrushes” with long handles (also called “tooth-rubbers”). They were made from animal hair (mainly from pig bristles), and with these, they rubbed the teeth, applying powders or paste / ointment or oil from some of the above-mentioned herbs (such as chamomile, ginger, clove, or mint…).
When the medicines were not effective or sufficient for treating dental problems and pain from bleeding, then skilled or simply calm old women usually took further action, which was the only way. Extraction of the tooth. Many resorted to the “good doctors” or “kombogiannites” who were villagers or wanderers. They were called “good doctors” because they referred to themselves and advertised as such, and they were also called “kombogiannites” because they used to keep their medical remedies secret, wrapped in handkerchiefs tied in knots (“kompoi”). Many of them were simply skilled individuals who also practiced the profession of barber, or even specializing in bloodletting with leeches collected from stagnant waters.
Many tooth specialists had special pincers (called “tooth forceps” or “dental pliers”) for extracting teeth. It is known that sometimes they missed and extracted (instead of the painful tooth) another nearby tooth or teeth. These pliers were passed down from generation to generation in the families who owned them. Two of these pliers are saved by the family of Petros Stavros Rigakos (see photo). These were brought to Goranoi from America (around 1950) by the mother of Georgios K. Rigakos (or Stavrakos), Stavroula (nee Kyriakakou). “During those years, these pliers relieved many Goranites by removing their damaged teeth…” notes Aimilia P. Rigakou.
Two examples of “dental pliers” (from 1950) retrieved from the family of Petros Rigakos
We record, finally, one of the many superstitions of the inhabitants of our village who attributed the falling out of teeth to the fact that some sufferers had their mouths open while a number of pine caterpillars crawled on the ground in front of them.
We also record one of the many scams that were attempted at that time. In the 1950s, glass bottles or jars – called “yalakia” or “gyalakia” – containing, according to labels, “tooth tonic” were circulated and sold in the cities of Athens and Patras. This was advertised “as the only healing medicine that relieves pain and protects teeth from any possible disease…”. These jars, according to testimonies of older people, had even reached our villages.
All these remedies, practices, and quack doctors ended or, at least, slowly disappeared (?) when the first dentists graduated from the University and settled in our area.
But let this note be a memorial for those well-intentioned “doctors” whose purpose was to ease pain and heal the sick.
I (Carol Kostakos Petranek) am honored to receive permission from the Katsoulakos family to translate and share articles from The Faris. Translation verification and corrections have been made by GreekAncestry.net. This is the fourteenth article of the ongoing series. Previous articles can be viewed here.
Sharing our Lakonian heritage with compatriots worldwide is both important and gratifying. It is a major reason I started this blog on January 25, 2012 with the goal of documenting my Greek research and assisting others who are embarking on this exciting journey.
Our experience in learning about our ancestors’ lives has been greatly enriched by the Faris (Φαρις) newsletters of Xirokampi. We are instantly transported back in time as we read the heartfelt stories of the older generations, captured by the writers and editors. These Faris authors are providing an essential archival service by ensuring that the histories of their villages will be preserved. I am grateful for the privilege of translating these stories into English and sharing them with people worldwide. Whether our roots are in Xirokampi or any other rural Greek village, we are all edified by learning of the everyday lives of our ancestors and seeing how they coped with–and triumphed over–their hard times.
Recently, I was taken by complete surprise when I saw this post on the blog of our our Pan-Laconian friends in South Australia. I thank them sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing the wonderful Faris stories with their readers. You can follow and read the interesting and informative newsletter of the Pan-Laconian Society of South Australia “Leonidas” at https://pallakonikodeltio.blogspot.com/.
By cross-posting and sharing articles about our Lakonian heritage, we can bring many more people expanded opportunities to learn of and understand their rich ancestral past.
In 2023, I brought home the full collection of Faris newsletters and placed them in the Library of Congress, where researchers worldwide now have access to primary source materials created at the local level. As the archivist wrote to me: “while we cannot predict when a researcher will need to look at material, we would be thrilled to have the ability to provide them with hard-to-find regional materials when they come to us.”
If you know of a Laconian online newsletter, website or blog, please send a link to me at spartanroots1@gmail.com and I will add it to the Spartan Roots Resource page. Thank you!
Barter economy (or labor) was a common practice in the past in our region and elsewhere. More common was the exchange of labor in olive picking and other agricultural and livestock tasks among families. Usually, barter labor occurred between families, but also between professionals, involving building houses or other activities or even household production of cheese, soap, pasta, etc. However, there were also notable and characteristic cases and stories of barter economy between communities or even between ecclesiastical authorities and the residents or professionals of the villages.
A first case/story is the one that has come down to us and concerns the painting of some of the icons of the altarpiece (iconostasis) of the Holy Trinity of Xirokambi. These are the 14 small icons in a row at the top of the iconostasis. As the old resident of the village, Dim. Men. Xanthakos, narrated before his death, an iconographer, Pan. Lazaris, lived in our area during the time of the Italian-German occupation. He painted icons for churches in exchange for olive oil. Each icon of the iconostasis that he painted (in one day, as remembered by D. M. X.) was “exchanged” for a can of oil!
Holy Trinity Church, Xirokampi showing the 14 icons across the iconostasis Photo by Carol Kostakos Petranek, June 2023
Another story that is characteristic of barter labor (and on a large scale) is the following: In Xirokambi until the early 1960s, long queues of residents lined up in front of the communal faucets at a few points in the village. Everyone waited to fill containers or pitchers, wooden barrels, or metal jugs with drinking water for all uses. At that time, the community council with presidents Georgios and Nikolaos Koumoustiotis successively, commissioned contractors for a large project for the village and its residents. Water was to be supplied to all houses with underground metal pipes from the tank that had been built in Anakolo. The “contract” with all the residents entailed their mandatory personal labor, “exchanging it” for the provision of water to each house. Instead of personal labor, some residents exchanged with the community a worker or an animal for transportation or a skilled craftsman with money or oil. The project was completed in the early 1970s and changed life in our village and elsewhere.
Woman at communal water faucet in the plateia (village square), Xirokampi, July 2018 Photo by Carol Kostakos Petranek
The third case concerns the operation (in the mid-1960s) in Xirokambi of a Branch of the Gymnasium [high school] of Sparta for the students of our area until an independent Gymnasium was established. At that time, many students used to stop their studies after Primary School or continue their studies in Sparta by renting rooms and receiving baskets of food every day… With the initiative of some residents, pharmacist Theof. G. Kalkanis and merchants Elias Chr. Kapetanakos and Ilias N. Liakakos, the establishment and operation of the branch became possible (after persistent efforts). The original and remarkable thing is that the teachers who were transferred from the Gymnasium of Sparta were “bartered” with the oil collected by the parents from the committee (…)
I (Carol Kostakos Petranek) am honored to receive permission from the Katsoulakos family to translate and share articles from The Faris. Translation verification and corrections have been made by GreekAncestry.net. This is the fourteenth article of the ongoing series. Previous articles can be viewed here.
The church marriage record was clear: Theodoros Dimitrios Kouris married Dimitroula Chatzakou, daughter of Ioannis, first marriage for both, on April 24, 1875:
Finding this record [1] for one of my Agios Ioannis families meant that I now had the name of Theodoros’ wife and the mother of his children. Everything seemed to line up: the wedding was in 1875 and the first child was born in October 1878, although the birth (if it was a first birth) was a tad late for that time period. I entered the information in my database and to online trees at FamilySearch, Ancestry and MyHeritage. Almost immediately, hints for records in Massachusetts popped up for the children. Not unusual – many families immigrated to America in the early 1900s. I checked one of the hints, a marriage record for son Apostolos, and noted with curiosity that his mother’s name was written not as Chatzakou, but as Pantazou.
Well, the two surnames sort of sound alike. I wondered if this was a clerical error (misunderstood the name?) or a mistake on the part of the child (some are unsure of their mother’s maiden name!).
Checking further, I saw that the Pantazou surname in U.S. records was found for other children in the family. Clearly, there was a disconnect somewhere.
Because this family is not related to me, I was not planning to research this line further. (My goal is to get the Greek records online so that descendants can make the leap from the U.S. to Greece). But I felt it was important to alert other researchers to the discrepancy, so I added this note in the profiles for both Theodoros and Dimitroula: Dimitroula’s surname, according to her Sparta marriage record, is Chatzakou. However, there are records in the U.S. giving her surname as Pantazou. Either there are two Theodoros Kouris’ in Massachusetts — one married to Chatzakou and one to Pantazou, OR her surname changed in the U.S.
Before moving on to extract another family name from Agios Ioannis records, I did make one additional entry for Theodoros: I marked him as deceased and in the place field, I put “Of Massachusetts, United States.” The word “of” signifies that this was a guess, as I did not have proof of the fact.
This entry proved to be a mistake for me and a red flag for Theodoros’ geat-granddaughter , Niki, who had been researching her family and found my note in an online tree. In an email to me, she wrote:
I want to clarify another piece that you aren’t aware of. Theodore never came to the US. His wife and all of their children came around 1909….except for Nikoletta, who stayed back to care for her father, Theodore, who was blind, and unable to travel at that time. In 1920, Dimitroula returned to Agios Ioannis and planned to travel with Theodore and Nikoletta back to Boston, to join the rest of the family…However, Theodore died unexpectedly, very shortly before they were scheduled to sail. Dimitroula and Nikoletta came without him, in the summer of 1920. The ship record shows only their two names. So you might want to modify your note about Dimitroula’s surname discrepancy since Theodore was never in the United States.
Oh my! Grateful for this clarification, I quickly corrected Theodoros’ death place to Agios Ioannis.
Niki had initially contacted me a few weeks ago when she found the marriage for Theodoros and Dimitroula Chatzakou online at MyHeritage[1]. She knew her great-grandmother was Dimitroula Pantazos, and the record naming Chatzakou was mystifying. Looking further and searching on “Pantazos,” she found and then sent me another marriage record which was indexed as: Theodoros D. Kontis and Dimitroula Pantazos, daughter of Anast., married October 29, 1876. She commented: “Could it be that the handwritten record from 1876 was translated incorrectly, into Kontis instead of Kouris?”
We outlined the issues:
The handwritten Greek in both marriage records was too scribbly for either of us to clarify whether the name was Kouris or Kontis.
This second marriage record shows it was Theodoros’ second marriage [B] and Dimitroula Pantazou’s first marriage [A].
Their marriage occurred in October 1876, exactly 18 months after Theodoros’ marriage in April 1875.
If this record was indeed for Theodoros Kouris, then his first wife [Chatzakou] would have died shortly after marriage [perhaps in childbirth?].
With Georgios born in October 1878, he and his siblings would be the children of Theodoros’ second wife, Pantazou–making the 1878, exactly two years aftermarriage, birth more realistic for the times.
Clearly, the answer lay in the clarification of Theodoros’ surname. A quick message to Gregory Kontos at GreekAncestry resolved the mystery: both marriage records were for Theodoros Kouris; the second record was transcribed incorrectly.
A few points to consider from this case study:
NEVER trust a name index!
ALWAYS review the original record. If it’s in Greek and unreadable to you, someone else can help. Upload to the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook page or send to Greg Kontos at GreekAncestry.
Search a variety of records to verify information. In this situation, looking at U.S. records for several of Theodoros’ children revealed the same mother’s name. This raised the chances that the children were correct, and the possibility that there was either an error in the marriage record or a second marriage for Theodore.
Document facts that don’t correlate, and make sure those notes are attached to each individual that is affected.
If you are making an assumption, state what the assumption is and why you are making it. I did not do this for Theodoros’ death place when I listed it as Massachusetts.
Theodoros had two wives with the same first name, which caused incorrect assumptions. The children’s baptismal records in the village church book gave their mother’s name as only Dimitroula (no surname) which caused me to assume that the Chatzakou record was correct.
Niki kept looking for information and changed her search terms to “Pantazos” which led her to finding her great-grandparents’ marriage record and the incorrect transcription of Theodoros’ surname. If she had not kept looking, the mystery would have remained.
Just because “this is the way it was” don’t assume that is true in your situation. I assumed that Theodoros had come to the U.S. with (or before) his children, which was the pattern for Greek men at the turn of the century. In this case, that was not the case. The mother came with the children, and the father remained in the village–a complete reversal of the norm.
Family of Theodoros Kouris and Dimitroula Pantazou, about 1902 Anna, Theodoros, possibly Anastasios (standing), Nikoletta, Dimitroula Pantazou, possibly Harry
Spartan Roots (Σπαρτιατικές Ρίζες) 