Chapter 3: Madame Helen, Louie and Lily:
New York, New York
Notes
Eleni's Death Certificate gives her age as 47 on May 26, 1933. The Manifest of the S.S. Macedonia, the ship that brought her and her daughter to America, shows her age to be 32 on July 31, 1912, which would have made her 53 at the time of her death. Her photographs lend credence to her having been born in 1880.
She may have hidden her age because of her marriage to a much younger man in Chicago in 1916. (Explained earlier in this text also, at Chapter 1, note 45.)
Soon after Eleni left Greece for America her sister Sofia's stepsons, Zenovios and Stavros (Constantinos Capidaglis' sons by his first marriage), made their way to Paris where they lived, worked and married: Zenovios to a Belgian, Leonie Bergmann; and Stavros to a Parisian, Yvonne Girault.
Christos Capidaglis was in New York City in January 1916 living at 321 West Twenty-ninth Street. Zenovios and Leonie immigrated to the United States in 1915; then immigrated to Argentina, returning to the United States in 1919. Stavros arrived in the United States in January of 1921 and lived with his brother and sister-in-law at 520 West 144 Street in New York City.
His wife, Yvonne and young son Guy joined him in April of the same year. Their sister, Hariclea, arrived in August of 1916 at the age of twenty-one. In about 1921 she married Fotios Demas, who she may have known in Greece. He came from Glyfáda, a coastal town near Athens.
Eleni's sister, Sultana, married Ioannis Thoma in Sozopolis and lived in Piraeus after 1906. Their son Thomas arrived in New York in February of 1917, listing his destination address as his cousin Eleni's flat on West Thirty-eighth Street. He was eighteen years old. His sister, Ioanna, immigrated in January of 1921 at the age of seventeen.
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Mahlepi is the kernel of the pit of the native Persian Cherry Tree. It is ground into a fine powder to flavor and make aromatic traditional holiday breads: especially Vasilopita.
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A type of sandstone quarried in Connecticut and New Jersey that was fashionable for the homes of the urban middle class from the 1830's to the end of the 19th century.
See: Tracie Rozhon, Brownstone (the Real Thing) Comes Back, NY TIMES, 7/4/2000,p.1.
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It ran from downtown Brooklyn along Fifth Avenue to Thirty-eighth Street where it branched south to Third Avenue, then continued on to Sixty-fifth Street.
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Readers who research Ellis Island records may find the surname of Constantinos Kapidaglis misspelled as Kanadaglis.
The misspelling was reported to Ellis Island in the year 2001 with hope that it would be corrected.
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Lily's cousin Toto (Calypso), Sofia Capidaglis' youngest child, was a, beautiful, blond woman when she married one Panaiotis (Pete) Protopappas. She divorced soon after her marriage and lived an independent life in New York City until she married a second time to Louie Tumola, a prominent news photographer. Toto, a bubbly, gossipy woman who loved scandalous stories, was alive at the age of ninety in 2001. She lived widowed and alone in a decaying home at Far Pond in South Hampton, Long Island. Eccentric and rigid, she had alienated most friends and relatives.
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Perna was misspelled "Perma" in the article.
In fact, Lily never used the name Perna. She used Athenas or Athanas as a maiden name.
[Return to the text at note 11.]
Mavrovitis, Jason C., Out of the Balkans,
Part 1, Chapter 3, Madame Helen, Louie and Lily: New York, New York
(PAHH.com, 2003), notes 1-11, available at http://www.pahh.com/mavrovitis/ch3/notes03.html.
Credit: Published in the Preservation of American Hellenic History network, PAHH.com
