IDTG

With the instrumental help of the Very Reverend Father Patriarchal Vicar Archimandrite Nikodimos Priangelos of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, of the Greek Orthodox church in Cairo, Egypt I was able to get information about my paternal grandfather’s baptism and birth.

According to the entry in the church’s records:

Kimon Andreou, son of Evangelos Andreou of Volos and Orthodoxia Stavrinou of Cyprus, born on June 22 1887 in Cairo and baptised in the holy church of St. Nicholas in Cairo on December 16, 1887 by the Reverend Father David and with Maria Stavrinou as the godmother

Code: 1 Page: 77 Number: 220

Coincidentally, my father got some information and it appears that Orthodoxia Stavrinou was from Larnaca, Cyprus. However, I do not know more about her such as her birth year or her parents.

It appears that the Stavrinou family migrated to Greece at some point as cousins of my father still live in Athens though contact is very sparse these days.

If and when I receive copies of any documents I’ll get them posted here.

In addition to the above, there is a document from the municipality of Athens listing information about my grandparents and specifically about my grandfather’s important life events. Unfortunately, his birth date differs from what is in the records of the church in Cairo.

As mentioned above, the church in Cairo states that my grandfather was born in 1887 but the document from the municipality of Athens states 1889. A difference of two years, which is larger than the 13 days of the Julian vs. Gregorian calendars (the latter being adopted in Greece in 1927). I tend to trust the church records more (as it regards the birth date), as they were contemporary, rather than the Athenian ones as those were recorded at a much later date. Also going against the city of Athens is the total lack of any information on his parents or place of birth. However, I do trust those records for the other dates as they all occured in Athens.

According to the records of the city of Athens:

• My grandmother, Athena Giakoumelos, was born in 1899.
• My grandmother’s parents were Spyridon and Maria Giakoumelos.
• My grandparents were married on August 25, 1913.
• My grandfather died in Athens on February 15, 1944

The phrase “order of chivalry” harkens back to a time of knights, dragons, fair maidens needing to be saved and magical swords. To some extent, it’s true!

Orders of Chivalry where created at the time of the Crusades to organize the warriors around a specific cause, most famous of all the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (or Knights Templar). Though these orders originally had an exclusively military character, they later became a form of recognition by a sovereign or the Pope.

Most of those orders created at the time of the crusades have ceased to exist. Others have merged into others and less than a handful have survived. Of the remaining orders, the oldest ones are the Most Noble Order of Garter in England, the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Anunciation of the House of Savoy and, of course, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta founded in the 11th century.

At that time, many orders were formed much like fraternities or organizations are today that had a common goal. However, the type of formation is no longer valid for the acquisition of the term “Order of Chivalry”. The basic requirement for the term is for a “fons honorum” or “fountain of honor”, the right to create such titles or orders by virtue of their office or position; this is typically the sovereign of a nation, when still in power. The fons honorum is held to remain even after the sovereign has lost the throne and stays with the royal house, if the order is considered a dynastic order.

What is a dynastic order you ask? It is an order granted by the head of a royal house to those who the head considers meritorious in some fashion. This ability to confer membership into the order remains with the family, even if the family is no longer in power. Examples of these dynastic orders are the Order of Saint Michael of the Wing and the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.

I won’t be going into all the orders out there and even less get into the various disputes over which orders are “true” and which are “pseudo-chivalric”. Sometimes those discussions are anything but chivalrous. In any case, a great resource is the International Committe for Orders of Chivalry, though be aware that they are in no way an official body and there really isn’t one. Each country decides which orders to accept as valid and which not. Each country has it’s own rules and can be as accepting as Sweden (where they are all accepted as valid) all the way to France where only a handful are. Another great informational source is the website Chivalric Orders maintained by Guy Stair Sainty.

Before ending this post, I would like to make a point that some of the orders though under a monarch have an exclusively religious character such as Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. Other times, there may be more than one order with the same name but under different monarchs, such as the Order of Golden Fleece which has a Spanish and an Austrian version.

Why mention these organizations on a heraldry & genealogical blog? Because members have a coat of armor that is displayed in the registers of the order and those members, in turn, display their decorations with their heraldic achievements.

Additionally, many of these orders that are also noble corporations have strict requirements for admission that in some cases go so far as to require 4 generations of proven nobility on both sides. Because of this, these orders have extensive documentation on their members that has been kept over the centurie. Therefore, if one can prove descent from someone who was a member of one of these orders, one can go back even more generations by access their records.

Contrary to popular belief, Greece has a long history of heraldry. Unfortunately, this rich tradition was almost completely eradicated during the Ottoman rule of the Greek lands (traditionally placed from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Greek War of Independence in 1821 though not historically accurate).

As we all know, heraldry was introduced as a form of identification of knights and leading warriors in general on the battlefield. For that reason, heraldry came up with its tinctures and its rules. Also, because heraldry was originally used in the battlefield, and imagine what the battlefields of the middle ages looked like, the earliest arms were very simple: a single tincture or a single charge or ordinary.

In this same vein, the ancient Greek warriors painted their shields with symbols. However, as opposed to traditional heraldry, the Greeks of the time did not use the same symbols consistently in every battle. The designs changed every time and were customized for the occasion, typically to induce terror on enemy. Other times, the symbols were used to identify the origin of the warriors such as with the well known lambda Λ of the Spartans (made famous in the movie 300). Therefore, one cannot claim that the ancient Greeks used the drawings on their shields to identify the person or family and thus it is not heraldry.

During the middle ages, Greece continued under the Roman Empire but it had become wholly hellenized. The Eastern Roman Empire, with it’s capital in the newly renamed Constantinople, is better known as the Byzantine Empire.

The mid to late Byzantine period coincides with the beginning of heraldry as we know it in the rest of Europe. With the crusaders having to pass through the empire to get to the Holy Land, many of the traditions of the western and eastern parts of Europe were exchanged. If heraldry had not already taken in the empire yet, it did with the Crusades. However, this is purely my own conjecture

On a more scientific basis, we can find images on seals that can be considered heraldic but, these are more personal rather than familial. It is in the 13th century with the restoration of the Empire under the Palelogos line that we can find heraldry as we know it today. However, heraldry remained with the upper classes and was not as widespread as other countries in western Europe. The arms typically ascribed to the Byzantine Empire are the double headed eagle and the tetragrammatic cross. I am not clear on whether these were just those of the Empire or also those of the Paleologos. The “B”s in the tetragrammatic (which mean “4 letters” in Greek) cross have been given the meaning of “Βασιλεύς Βασιλέων Βασιλεύων Βασιλευόντων” or “King of Kings Ruler of Rulers”.

After the fall of Constantinople, the tradition continues in those lands not under Ottoman rule such as Rhodes (with the Hospitaller knights), Crete (under the Venetians) and the Ionian islands (also under Venice). However, only the latter remained outside of Ottoman rule completely. The heraldry of Rhodes is mostly of the Hospitaller knights, better known today as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Especially in the Ionian islands, the Greek population adopted many of the Italian traditions and each island had its noble families listed in the local Libro d’Oro along with their coat of arms. Many of these families sent their children to Italy to study and in most cases, if they didn’t already have arms, they adopted new arms when at University.

Johannes Rietstap, the noted Dutch heraldist of the 19th century, is best known for his published list of the blazons of arms of over 130000 families of Europe. Amongst those, we find a number of Greek families of which a small sampling are listed below (from the online Rietstap database in French):

• Agelastos D’argent, à deux bandes d’azur.
• Agliardis Écartelé: aux 1 et 4, d’azur, à l’aigle de sable, couronnée d’or; aux 2 et 3, de sable, à trois pommes de grenade au naturel. Casque couronné.
• Angelos De gueules, à quatre grandes fusées d’or, rangées en croix, chaque fusée ch. d’un ange habillé d’une dalmatique d’argent, et d’une tunique d’azur, ailé d’argent, tenant de sa main dextre une épée du même, en bande.
• Anthonis D’or, au chevron de gueules, acc. en pointe d’un sanglier de sable.
• Argyropoulos D’or, à une tête et col d’aigle de sable issant d’un coeur de gueules, la tête traversée par un sabre d’argent garni d’or posé en bande. Timbre: couronne du Saint-Empire. Supports: deux licornes de sable.
• Argyros D’or, à la croix d’azur, cantonnée de quatre étoiles (5) du même.
• Comneno D’or, à l’aigle éployée de sable, tenant de sa griffe dextre une épée et de sa senestre un sceptre et surmontée d’une couronne impériale, ladite aigle ch. d’un écusson ovale d’argent, surch. de trois cloches d’azur.
• Comnenos D’argent, à trois fasces de sable (armes de la ville de Trébisonde). Les membres de la famille impériale portaient ces armes sur le tout de leurs armes de famille qui étaient: D’or, à trois cloches de sable.
• Ducas D’azur, à la croix d’argent.
• Lascaris De gueules, à l’aigle éployée d’or, chaque tête couronnée du même. Devise: LASCARORUM FELICITATI.
• Lascaris D’or, à l’aigle éployée de sable, languée et armée de gueules, surmontée d’une couronne à l’antique d’or.
• Lascaris De gueules, à l’aigle éployée d’or, chaque tête couronnée du même, ch. sur la poitrine d’un écusson de gueules à un soleil d’or. Légende: NEC ME FULGURA.
• Lascaris Écartelé d’azur et d’argent, à l’aigle éployée de sable, becquée et membrée d’or, languée de gueules, brochant sur les écartelures, chaque tête couronnée d’or, ch. sur la poitrine d’un écusson de gueules à un soleil d’or.
• Lascaris-Castellar D’or, à l’aigle éployée de sable, becquée et membrée de gueules.
• Palaeologos Armes de fam.: De gueules, à la croix d’or. Armes mod.: De gueules, à la croix d’or, cantonnée de quatre B du même (signifiant Basileus Basileuvn Basileuvn Basileuontun, en français: Roi des Rois, régnant sur des rois, Michel Pâleologue, élevé au trône byzantin en 1260, ajouta les quatre B aux armes de famille.).
• Palamides D’argent, à un dragon ailé à deux pattes de sinople, rehaussé d’or.

There are a few other sources one can look at to get blazons of arms of Greek families. One of the main sources cited repeatedly is the book written in 1983 by Mihail Dimitri Sturdza “Grandes Familles de Grèce, d’Albanie et de Constantinople“.

Another excellent and well researched source on heraldry focused on families from the Ionian island of Kefalonia is the website of Mr. Panayotis Cangelaris. He has posted his paper on the arms of Greek students at the University of Padova during the 17th and 18th centuries here. He has also published a dedicated list of those students from the island here.

Today, many members of the Greek diaspora have either assumed arms or have had them granted to them by one of the many heraldic authorities of the world. Online listings of arms are available and with a simple search one can find them easily.

One more item, that I believe is important to be noted, is that there is an extremely small community of heraldic enthusiasts in Greece who have come together and created the Heraldic and Genealogical Society of Greece (Εραλδική και Γενεαλογική Εταιρεία Ελλάδος). They’re located in Athens, Greece, meet regularly and publish essays and works. As I find out more, I may write an entry dedicated on the society.

In the previous entry I talked about my mother’s maternal line. In this entry, I’ll go over my father’s maternal line, the Giakoumelos or Γιακουμέλος family of Zakynthos (Zante) or Ζάκυνθος.

The Giakoumelos surname is fairly common on the island and upon visiting, one sees the name everywhere. Unfortunately, I am not aware of the meaning of the name though I will share as much as I can from the family’s tradition.

My grandmother, Athena Giakoumelos or Αθηνά Γιακουμέλου, was born in the village of Gyri or Γύρι in 1899 and her family was one of the founding families of the village. The village is located in the municipality of Artemisia, just north of the town of Macherado and about 30 kilometers from the island’s capital of Zakynthos. The village dates back to 15th century is has always been a small town. According to the latest census, it has 58 permanent residents and the Giakoumelos of today are related to my grandmother – probably cousins of some sort.

The family tradition is that the townsfolk of Gyri were originally from the Mani region of Greece that left the area due to the very harsh conditions there. Adding to the difficult living conditions caused by the aridity and lack or arable land, Mani was a center of clashes with the Ottoman and Venetian forces.

The story continues with the family returning at some point to Mani believing the conditions have become better in the homeland. However, after staying in Mani for a few years, the family returns to Gyri.

It is unclear if this is the story of the family or of the population of the town. It appears that the village has always been sparsely populated and never was even moderately sized.

I have only visited the village once where my family met cousins of my father that still live there. We got a tour of the small village and saw a monument to my great-grandfather, my grandmother’s father, for his contributions. Apparently, he was a person of some importance in the village and was who founded the school there.

I’d like to visit the village again and try to get accurate information about the family’s history and perhaps corroborate some of the family histories.

As mentioned previously, my mother’s family are the Vergara Edwards of Chile and my maternal grandmother is a direct patrilineal descendent of the founder of the Edwards line in Chile, George Edwards Brown better known as Jorge Edwards Brown. As with the Martínez de Vergara entry, I will focus on the descendents that lead to me however this time, I will list the children in the order they were born unless otherwise noted.

George Edwards was born in Finsbury, London, England on January 2nd, 1780 to John Edwards, a carpenter, and Elizabeth Brown and joined an English privateer ship as the on-board surgeon/medic. He first reached the Chilean coast in 1797 after sailing the South American coastline. In 1803, he joins the crew of the privateer ship Blackhouse that focused on attacking ships and ports under the Spanish crown. It was during the Blackhouse’s raid of the city of La Serena that George Edwards met his future wife, Isabel Ossandón, while sacking her father’s house. The story goes that the two fell in love at first sight and it was that moment that George Edwards decided to leave his privateering life behind and stay with the woman he loved. He deserted his ship and evaded the search from his former crew by hiding for three days in a barrel in the Ossandón house. He only came out of hiding when Spanish reinforcements arrived in the city and repelled the invaders. The Spanish authorities arrested him and sent him to serve a two year prison sentence in Callao. He returned to La Serena in 1805 and coverted to Catholicism, it is in his baptismal papers where we find out about his parents.

George Edwards worked as a surgeon for a couple of years but, quickly became a money lender to the small mining companies that were popping up in the Coquimbo area. This latter profession allowed him to amass a small fortune. His strong anti-Spanish sentiments made him a key figure in the Chilean War of Independence and for his services, the supreme commander Bernardo O’Higgins made him a citizen in 1818. George Edwards later became a member of the National Congress representing various regions.

George Edwards married Isabel Ossandón Iribarren in 1807 with whom he had 8 children: Joaquín Domingo Felipe Benicio Edwards Ossandón, Teresa Gregoria Edwards Ossandón, Juan Bautista Edwards Ossandón, José Santiago Edwards Ossandón, María del Carmen Edwards Ossandón, José Agustín Edwards Ossandón, José María Edwards Ossandón and Jacoba Edwards Ossandón. After Isabel’s death, George remarries in 1834 to Ventura Argandoña Subercaseaux with whom he had no children. He dies on March 4, 1848.

Joaquín Domingo Felipe Benicio Edwards Ossandón was born on August 23, 1808 and was the first born son of the founder of the Edwards line in Chile. He studied in Boston, Massachussetts, USA where he also worked at the company Baker & Hodges. On his return to Chile, he is employed at a bank owned by his uncle Samuel Frost Haviland. He was instrumental in establishing the infrastructure for the mining of the copper fields of Diaguita in La Serena and Lirquén in Concepción. He was mayor of La Serena in 1864 and a representative of the city.

Joaquín marries Margarita Garriga on December 30, 1842 and have twelve children: Joaquín Edwards Garriga, Jorge Edwards Garriga, Margarita Edwards Garriga, Teresa Edwards Garriga, Victoria Edwards Garriga, Matías Edwards Garriga, Luis Edwards Garriga, Elisa Isabel Edwards Garriga, Carlos Fernando Edwards Garriga, Rosa Edwards Garriga, Ana Isabel Edwards Garriga, Guillermo Eugenio Edwards Garriga. He died on November 7, 1869.

Carlos Fernando Edwards Garriga married Javiera Ortúzar Bulnes with whom he had seven children: Javier Edwards Ortúzar, Carmen Edwards Ortúzar, Oriana Edwards Ortúzar, Luz Edwards Ortúzar, Teresa Edwards Ortúzar, Eugenia Edwards Ortúzar, Fernando Edwards Ortúzar.

Javier Edwards Ortúzar married Luisa Hurtado Olea with whom he had four children (in no particular order): Fernando Edwards Hurtado, Eliana Edwards Hurtado, Gabriela Edwards Hurtado and Javier Edwards Hurtado.

Eliana Edwards Hurtado was my grandmother and was born on April 15, 1923 and married my grandfather, Fernando Antonio Vergara Ortúzar, on October 27 1939 with whom she had twelve children. Of those twelve children, my mother is the eldest female. My grandmother died on June 6th, 2001 in Santiago, Chile.