Individual Details

Information from son, Nick Minakakis, during my visit to Brooklyn in 19xx.

Note from Jenny Stewart, Greek genealogy Facebook friend:
October 8, 2013
Hi Carol, 
I did recently talk to a Minakakis still living in Sparta, and he told me all Minakakis are related and that they are from the village Kalyvia Sochas in Sparta. He also told me before the Minakakis came to Kalyvia Sochas they were in Karpathos, the island by Crete. Very interesting origins. 
My great grandfather George Andrew, came over in the early 1900's. He said he was from Sparta. His brothers, sisters, and cousins, who came to visit America or to live, all listed Socha or Sparta as there home.
I'm working on a family tree for the Minakakis side, and have my family tree on ancestry.com: (Korn Family Tree - http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/49029482/family?cfpid=12956551841&selnode=1)
I did see the 1872 election list for Soha! Very exciting. There are also a lot of records on ellis island for Minakakis. Some are under Minacakis, Minahaky, Minakokis. Did Nicholas come to America or another country? What year was he born? 
Jenny
***
Email from Barbara Minakakis (Peter's granddaughter) to Carol Petranek, July 2017. The story of the Minakakis home in Kalyvia Socha.
Yes, my grandfather Minakakis did believe he was leaving his son a treasure. Periodically, he'd ask my father to send over some money to buy olive groves. Here's what happened:
     In early 2001, six years after my father died, I took it into my head to secure the property, which I had visited many times and really loved. My mother, who told me I was throwing money into a sewer, that I'd never be able to get title to the place, accompanied me to the consulate on 79th Street, where we got things translated and gave power of attorney to an Athenian lawyer recommended by a Greek international lawyer at Skadden Arps, where my friend Marian was also an attorney. 
      That summer, Marian, her father, and I went to Greece partly to do something nice for Marian's father (Marian's mother had died the year before), and partly to meet the lawyer and surveyor and see to the property. My mother, with her bad back and dislike of flying, didn't want to come along.
       In Sparta, the surveyor, the lawyer, Marian, and my grandfather's second wife Nikoletta piled into the surveyor's car, and Nikoletta showed us all the non-contiguous olive groves. Nikoletta was very happy to be taking me to the trees she was so fond of and had worked so hard at cultivating -- what a sweet person she was. One was accessed by a narrow path between two other homes in the valley. Another, larger, was about 12 trees by 9 trees in a vast sea of like olive trees and located only by virtue of its position between two big rhododendrons. There were a couple of others. Back at the house in Sohas, the surveyor, after speaking to my grandfather's brother's son-in-law, who had his own home but always showed up with his wife Maria and children when I visited the property, told me my grandfather had owned only half the house -- news to me, as it would have been to my father, who had had my grandfather's will probated. Half a house? True. my papou had allowed his brother and his family to live in half the house, but they had died and the younger generation didn't live there anymore . . . .         Back in Athens, later, we paid the lawyer what he asked (for the surveyor's fee, his own fee for work done thus far, and the property taxes) but were given no receipt. When we returned to the United States, the lawyer made another request for money (which I sent over), still without ensuing receipts; and finally no response to emails sent along by me asking for receipts and for progress reports on property.
         For a few years, I'd get long-distance telephone calls from Greece asking me if I'd like to sell the property. I always said no, believing, as my father did, that it was Minakakis property and would always be. (I figured I'd renovate, use the property once in a while, and leave it to the cousins.) Finally, after a while, just to see what would happen, I told one caller I might want to sell, that he should find out what he could about the property and then we'd talk. He called back some time later, said taxes were never paid, that there was no record of my title, etc., and the phone calls stopped after that. 
         It's always the same story for the American whose Greek isn't very good, who isn't on the scene. Now that I have that funny clotting condition, and flying long distances would be possible only with blood thinners, I'm not going to spend any time in Kalivia Sohas. But very occasionally I wonder what happened to the property. Are my cousin Maria and her husband Jimmy, or their children, looking after it? Have they -- or the Athenian lawyer with power of attorney to conduct transactions -- sold it to Germans? Did Nikoletta's family get hold of it? Has it slipped between the legal cracks and caved in? Oh well. 
         But that's the story of the Minakakis compound with its orange and lemon trees, its almond trees, its olives, its walnuts, its old oven in the far right-hand corner of the cobbled courtyard, and the path right up to the cleft and the look-out tower and little church (once a temple to Athena). In the paperback edition of the Pausanius guide to Greece there's a footnote that refers to the area just above my house. It all used to mean a lot to me but doesn't now. 

Birth	15 May 1895	Kalyvia Socha, Sparta, Lakonia, Greece
Naturalization	21 Jan 1902	Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States
Immigration	1912	New York City, New York, United States
Marriage	26 Apr 1923	Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States - Constance A. Lerikos
Census	1930	Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States
Census	1940	Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States
Military	1942	Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States
Death	1965	Kalyvia Socha, Sparta, Lakonia, Greece
Divorce		Constance A. Lerikos
Alt name		Panagiotis
FamilySearch ID		L84S-GMD

Spouse	Constance A. Lerikos (1906 - 1992)
Child	Nicholas Peter Minakakis (1924 - 1995)
Child	Mary Minakakis (1926 - 2014)
Child	Living
Child	Living

Spouse

Nikoletta ( - )

Father	Nikolaos A. Minakakis (1871 - )
Mother	Maria Karenis (1876 - )
Sibling	Christos Nikolaos Minakakis ( - )
Sibling	Georgios Nikolaos Minakakis (1896 - 1966)

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