My Hellenic Ancestry

My great-grandparents, Socrates and Helen (Kellesides) Patterson

                 In 1894, a young man by the name of John Socrates Papanagnostis left his home in  the village of Vathy on the Aegean Sea island of Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor.  He was twenty-two years old, and bound for America, in search of the dream that led many people to this country.  He eventually changed his surname to Patterson, an anglicized version of the name he was born with and one that would no longer mark him as an immigrant in the new country.  Perhaps he didn't realize that with this change of surname, he would lose the ready identification of his heritage as the descendant of a learned priest -- papas meaning descendant of a priest, and agnostis meaning reader.  He kept, as his given name, the name Socrates, a true link to his Greek ancestry.

                There is no doubt that Socrates Patterson's ties to his homeland remained strong.  Nine years after his arrival in the United States, Socrates returned to Asia Minor to take as his wife, Elena (Helen) Kellesides, the daughter of the well-to-do Kosta and Kalinori Kellesides of Constantinople.  Socrates was thirty-one years old, and Elena was a girl of seventeen.  Elena Kellesides, by the origins of her surname, was a descendant of the Greeks of Pontos, whose Ionian forbearers settled in Asia Minor.  The newlyweds traveled to the United States and settled in New London, Connecticut, where Socrates had already established a business.  Elena became known by the anglicized version of her name, Helen.  Over the next fifteen years, seven children were born to the couple.  My grandfather, Constantine Socrates Patterson, was their third child.

                The following pages are my attempt to explore my Greek heritage.  I will be updating my pages frequently as I learn new information.

Some of the links on this table may not be active yet, but they will be soon.

This page is lovingly dedicated to my maternal grandfather, Constantine Socrates Patterson, "Poppy", and to my great-aunt, Mary Andromache Kelles Stone, without whom I would know little of my Hellenic ancestry.

To stop music, click on the square black button, below.

You are listening to the Greek tune, "Mera Maghiou",
sequenced in midi format, from Panos Mavraganis' website.

The leaf graphic on this page is from the stencil,
Olive Branch,  which I am using with the kind permission of
the Dressler Stencil Company.
© Dressler Stencil Co.

The background paper for this page is from
Ender Design's Realm Graphics collection