Desperately seeking

[Ludwig II]

I have a friend who is half Scottish, half Greek (he deep fries his food in olive oil).

We are looking for any information on Markellos Kontomathios, who died on the 26th of February 1985 in Houston, to fill gaps in his information.

Can anybody help at all?

 

[GoreWound]

did some google
found a public record of the death certificate
http://www.mocavo.ca/Markellos-Kontomathios-Texas-Death-Record-Index-1964-1998/17207344914358491841
and a marriage certificate to a lady name Lena C.
http://marriage-divorce-records.mooseroots.com/d/c/Markellos-Kontomathios?

I think that's the right person as the dates seem to match what you've said, but both are listed as Harris county Texas.

hope this helps, good luck with your search.

 

[Ludwig II]

We have that much. Markellos is an elusive character. I think he came from Vari, in SE Greece, based on what I can tease out of the home details on the birth certificate, but without any certainty at all.

 

[GoreWound]

Hall Vari Voula Vouliagmeni

Address: Karamanlis 18, 16673 Voula
Tel. Centre: 213 2020 000
Fax: 210 9657 131
e-mail: [email protected]

that might help, its the contact information for the municipal offices in Vari Greece.
again, good luck.

 

[Ludwig II]

Thanks, that's the kind of thing we've been looking for. Our searches had originally centred around Chios, then we started looking at ships with Chios in the name.

I don't know how we'd find a fraction of what we already have without the internerd.

 

[GoreWound]

if google didn't have an automatic translator I wouldn't have been able to tell what that website was, lol.

I'm not sure about the state of record keeping in Greece, but assuming you can breach the language barrier they might be able to pull some census data or something.

but it is sometimes rather sobering to realize that you are doing something that would have been completely impossible less than twenty years ago. Go Go Information Age Rangers!

 

[Ludwig II]

Well, for the moment, we have hit the wall. Markellos only shows up in America for the moment, no mention of him in any English or Greek language sites, and only the limited info we have already.

My mate's birth mother only gets mentioned online in her obituary, and there are no photographs. This is hard work for him. He's found some of his maternal grandfather's movements though, which is something to know. There's actually a grave booked in a cemetery for him, but the record doesn't show it as being occupied yet; he might still be alive, you never know.

 

[Trey]

Ludwig- This thing we all use so often, is still relatively new. I am not at all surprised that you have not been able to find complete records.
Hopefully, you will be successful soon.
The Mormon Church in Salt Lake City USA, strives to keep extensive genealogical records for every human being that ever lived. It would be where I'd go.
Good luck!

 

[Ludwig II]

I didn't know about the Mormons, I'll pass that one on. Ta very much for that.

 

[Trey]

Ludwig- Another member here who was involved in the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), said that local LDS churches sometimes have a computer connection to the main database in Salt Lake City. These access points are open to the public.

 

[Ludwig II]

Passing this on immediately.

A contact letter for his oldest half sister was written and sent by an intermediary for him, and arrived on Monday. We await the reaction. It might be the other shoe dropping, where she knew he existed, or a shock as she didn't. Then comes her reaction, whether to ignore him and hope he goes away, write back and tell him to go away, or a welcome ranging from polite interest to choirs of angels joy.

 

[fasteddy]

Ludwig,

Have you considered ancestry.com? They are a pay as you go site but I believe you can try it for a short time for free.
My brother had it and he found out a great deal about our family. Pretty interesting. He also exposed some hidden family secrets. He used the Mormon Church Registry as well.

I can only imagine how excited your friend must be to find unknown relatives. Hoping his half sister welcomes him with open arms.

Steve.

 

[Ludwig II]

It's bad enough for me, watching. It's really getting to him, just waiting to see what, if anything happens.

We still have the Greek connection to hunt down, and Kontomathios is a rare name on the internerd. One individual looks as if he could be a nephew. Time travel him back to 1980-4 and he could be a brother.

Markellos' ex wife shows as still being alive, so she may be a source of information, at least as far as details are concerned. The problem with finding things out is you may find someone wasn't a person you'd look up to. Skeletons in closets aren't the half of it in some families, more like a palatial charnel house.

 

[fasteddy]

That is all too true Ludwig. It is a gamble when your searching blind like he is. The best it got for us was some of our more pious family members had alarmingly premature children who lived even though they were born so soon into the marriage.

Steve.

 

[Ludwig II]

That's nothing, I'm on the wedding photographs, when it wasn't required, let alone fashionable.

 

[fasteddy]

Now that's amazing. Ours were Victorian and Edwardian time frame and for the most part strong Baptists and Scottish Presbyterians who never yielded to the pleasures of the flesh until the legal knot had been tied or so we heard.

Steve.

 

[Ludwig II]

No matter how high the wall, an animal will always climb it.

 

[Ludwig II]

My friend's mother was from one of those two mud huts and a pigsty villages in Scotland, ruled with a rod of iron by the local minister and the razor tongues of the housewives. She was in Newcastle Upon Tyne, 18 years old, working or at university.

The sudden freedom from the crushing conformity and hypocrisies may well have gone to her knickers, we don't know anything yet.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Some relatives on my Dad's side were a stiff faced lot and around 15 years ago when they asked my Mum to do some genealogy research for them Mum discovered that their English great grandmother hadn't been married despite her 11 children some of whom may not have had the same father. Having been generally looked down on with some measure of disdain by said relatives when my brothers and sister and I were growing up our delight knew no bounds

 

[fasteddy]

One of the stories came from my mother. It seems that her fathers mother was married to one of two brothers. When the first husband died at an early age she "married" the second brother which was not legal at the time.
He was not a child from the first husband so he was in fact not legitimate which he used to joke about from time to time mom said.

The best one, for me, was my fathers mother. She was one of those saintly grandmothers who never had a hair out of place nor did she ever step out the door with out being dressed to perfection. Her parents came from extremely well off Scottish families in Liverpool who had a very large provision and wine merchant businesses.

Out of the blue they decide to emigrate to Canada which wasn't that unusual in the 1880's if you had a desire to get ahead one moved to the one of Britain's colonies.

My great grandparents chose Saskatchewan. Doesn't mean much if you don't know much about North America but they were dropped off the train on the side of the tracks into a vast expanse of grass land where not even a town existed. There was no train station at the time and a store was just being built and that was all the town there was. Tens of thousand acres of nothing and almost no trees.
They had been given 160 acres by the Canadian government that they had to improve with in I believe 5 years to a certain dollar amount. They had never farmed in their lives and I'm sure they had no idea what awaited them plus my grandmother was a baby in arms and less than a year old.
There was great deal of suspicion that Grandma may have been a wee bit premature and her parents were required to move to the colonies to remove the stain on family honour.

When she was 18 she married my grandfather a genuine no good but a brilliant business man. When my dads older brother applied for his pension he found out his birthday was celebrated a couple of months later than it really was. That caused a lot of fun for the grandchildren And fortunately grandma had passed on before the truth came out but certain things she said suddenly made sense.
Must have been the warm summer night and the moon light and the reason grandma never drank (again).

Steve.