Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Ziso and Sofia Ortakioglis' son, Hristodul (born c. 1838), took his father's original surname, Zissis. Hristodul married a young woman named Vasiliki Vserkozov whose father, Dimitri was Bulgarian and mother, Sultana Antoniou, Greek. In Hristodul's death certificate, both he and Vasiliki are identified as Orthodox Christians, Greek nationals, and Bulgarian citizens living in Sozopolis. The detailed if inconsistent differentiations made in legal documents of the time reflected the ethnic, religious and nationalist awareness that was growing in the Balkans.
Hristodul witnessed his mother Sofia's rage at the Anglo-French preparations to land at Sozopolis, and was old enough to have followed the progress of the Crimean War. Russia's defeat was certainly a disappointment for Bulgarians and Greeks who longed for freedom. The next generation would support new Russian thrusts toward the Bosphorus and the Aegean.
In 1899 Sofia, the youngest of four daughters born to Hristodul and Vasiliki Zissis, was barely fifteen when Konstantinos Kapidaglis,(57) a dashing and adventuresome widower who was twenty-six years older than she, married her. Constantinos claimed to have been forty-one at the time. However he also maintained that he remembered the Anglo-French fleet anchored in the bay of Sozopolis, which would add perhaps five years to his age.
Constantinos came to the marriage with three children from his first wife, Harliklea Zurmali Georgiu who died in 1895 giving birth to a daughter, also named Hariklea. Constantinos' eldest son Stavros, born in 1881, was older than his new stepmother; his second son, Zenovios, was about the same age.
The Capidaglis family first appeared in Sozopolis in the eighteenth century. The surname derives from the place Kapi Dagi ("Door of the Mountain" in Turkish), an Island in the Sea of Marmara, Turkey, and site of the ancient Greek colony of Kyzikos, later known as Kapidagi, and now the modern city of Belkis. He, just as Ziso Ortakliogis, was an immigrant to Sozopolis, and named after his place of origin "Kapidaglis." There is no record of his given name. He married a woman of Sozopolis and with her had a daughter, Theofano.
When Theofano Kapidaglis married her husband, Tsvetkov, he took his father-in-law's surname, thereby securing it. One can only wonder why. The name Tsvetkov was maintained as a middle name in the next generation by their son, Constantine Tsvetkov Capidaglis
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