THE GREEKS OF CARBON COUNTY BY H E L E N ZEESE PAPANIKOLAS*
T
was the last of the Europeans to come to America. Fewer than two thousand Greeks were in the entire country before the 1880's. The first arrivals were young boys bought by American naval officers and philanthropists on the Turkish slave block. They were sent to the United States for education and freedom and many distinguished themselves as teachers or naval officers. 1 HE GREEK IMMIGRANT
It was not until the turn of the century that the yearly Greek immigrants numbered a thousand or more. They were mostly young men and boys escaping poverty by sailing towards the bright light of America. Some came to avoid the compulsory three-year military service in the Greek army where a peasant youth could seldom rise above a menial. A great many came from those parts of Greece still under Ottoman domination which conscripted Greek youths into the dreaded Turkish infantry. From Ellis Island they made their way about the streets of New York, searching for someone with the same ethnic characteristics as their own who could help them find work. Sometimes they wandered about, lost in the city's maze, until a labor agent, through signs, offered them work in mills, factories, or road gangs elsewhere. T h e more fortunate ones, who knew countrymen already working in the textile cities, went directly to them. * Mrs. Papanikolas is a native of Carbon County, Utah, and a graduate of the University of Utah (1939), where she served as editor of the Pen, literary magazine of that institution. She has resided in Salt Lake City since 1932. i Alexander George Paspatis, doctor of medicine, graduate of Amherst in 1831; Loukas Miltiades, congressman from Wisconsin; John Celivergos Zachos, graduate of Kenyon College in 1836, educator; Captain George Musalas Calvocoresses, graduate of Annapolis, as was his son George Partridge Calvocoresses, who rose to the rank of rear admiral. Most important was Michael Anagnostopoulos, later shortened to Anagnos, who worked with Samuel Gridley Howe to help liberate Crete in 1867. He came to America where he married Howe's daughter and became head of the Perkin's Institute for the Blind. There he introduced modern methods for the education of the sighdess. In World W a r II a Liberty ship was named the S. S. Michael Anagnos.
