Back on the trail of Charlie Ross

We do not have much new information but every step forward is worthwhile. I have had a researcher doing some more work for me and she has established that he is listed as a fishmonger in Gladstone, from 1885 onwards.

Sands & amp; MacDonald directors have him recorded but not in the 1884 edition. But as directories were usually produced in the year following collection of data, he may well have been there in 1884.

His 1907 obituary said he had been in Gladstone for 'more than 20 years' which fits with 1884 or even 1883, although if the latter, it is more likely the obit. would have said nearly 25 years instead of more than 20 years. It being the way of journalism and an arrival of 1882 leaving him one year short.

So, if Charlie arrived in 1883 and lived in Port Pirie, long enough to be 'remembered' and it being considered important to reprint his obituary from the Areas Express in the Port Pirie Recorder, it's a good guess that he spent a few years in the town. I would say a minimum of five years and a maximum of ten years.

This would have Charlie arriving in Australia either in 1878 or between 1873 and 1878. In 1873 he was 24 years old and could still have spent ten years  or more at sea, having joined as young as twelve. And if he was on a British ship for that time, Ithaca being a British Protectorate from 1815, he may well have Anglicised his name many years earlier, as other sailors have been known to have done.

A date of 1883 for arriving in Gladstone,  means Charlie may well have known Mary Ross for some years before their marriage in 1888. He may even have moved to the town because of her although why they would wait so long to marry is a question.  A Glastone business directory first records Mrs E. Atkins in 1878, the year Mary gives birth to her illegitimate son, Edward Welch Atkins.

The family story of Charlie Ross jumping ship in Port Germein, which was first 'discovered' as a port in 1840 but the jetty was not built until 1881, may well be true, although Charlie could have arrived earlier because  ships would anchor in the gulf, before the jetty was built, with barges and boats to ferry people ashore. 

The researcher wrote:

I also found a Charles Ross listed three times in the index to (Ships) Discharge Register, able seaman each time, discharged 11.1.1882 from Anna Bell, 8.12. 1883 from Lass of Gawler, and 6.5.1884 from Empress of China. These appear to be small ships that worked round SA and beyond. Details of Empress of China (plus photo) and Lass of Gawler can be found in State Library of SA catalogue online.

I couldn’t be sure that this is your Charlie Ross or not, but it is a likely scenario, and the dates sort of fit, if he was based in Pt Pirie prior to going to Gladstone.

The dates of 1882 and 1883 don't quite fit with Charlie being in Gladstone, at least by 1886, to fit the 'more than 20 years, and spending enough time in Port Pirie to be remembered so well a quarter of a century on. But it is possible that he was the Charles Ross listed for Discharge in 1882, with four years in Pirie, a small town at the time, and perhaps enough of a character with a heavy Greek accent to be remembered. Or maybe he was also just such a nice bloke that everyone liked him. His son, my grandfather, Charles Vangelios Ross, was like that.

I am going to post again the information written previously because it is so long since it was published and it is easier than wading back through older posts.

  Many old Pirieans well remember the subject of this paragraph, which is taken from the Areas' Express :
 

" It is 'with sincere regret " we have to record the death of Mr Charles Ross, of this town after protracted illness from asthma, &c.

Deceased was born 58 years ago, and, when a young man left his native land— Greece—and after a roving career during which he had his fair share of adventures, came to South Australia and settled at Port Pirie. Eventually he came to Gladstone, where, - for more than twenty years he has carried on his vocation as a purveyor of fish, &s. Although - taking" no part in public affairs, he,- by his unostentatious but genial manner, won a large circle of friends, who sadly deplore his death which took place on Sunday.

The remains were - interred in the Gladstone Cemetery on Monday, the Rev J. Raymont officiating. . The greatest sympathy- Is felt for the widow—-a.daughter of Mrs Atkins —and her, five children." ~

18th September 1907, Port Pirie Recorder from the Areas Express.

I have been drawn back to this having found it again on Trove while researching Edward Atkins and Hannah McLeod.

While it is good to read that great-grandfather Charlie Ross was well respected and even better, well liked, in Gladstone it also makes me think that somewhere there is an earlier story about him which throws more light onto his 'roving career' and his 'fair share of adventures. I just have to find it when I have a chance to get to Gladstone and go through the copies of the old Areas Express which was the local newspaper at the time.

The age of fifty-eight fits with a birth year of 1849 and given that the story says he left his native land as a young man, as opposed to boy, it indicates that he did not join the merchant navy as a twelve or thirteen year old (or younger) as was common, but in his late teens or even early twenties. And that makes me wonder if he was married when he left Greece.

Taking twenty as a 'round' age for a young man, it means he left in 1869 and given that he spent more than twenty years in Gladstone, he had to arrive in that town by 1886 and he had to have spent long enough in Port Pirie to be remembered by 'older Pireans.' A minimum of five years, although more is likely, would have had him arrive in South Australia in 1881 and possibly a few years earlier. That would have given him ten years for a 'roving career' which is probably more than enough.

So what was happening on Ithaca  and in Greece, during the 1860's which might have prompted a young man to embark on a 'roving career' as a sailor?  Ithaca had come under English rule some sixty years earlier so young Charlie, or perhaps Carolus, would have had a reasonable education.

The "United States of the Ionian Islands" was formed, governed by a Constitution imposed in 1817 where Ithaca was represented by one member (in the Ionian Senate). During the years of the Greek Revolution against the Turks, Ithaca offered hospitality and medical care to the revolutionaries and Ithacans took part in the War of Independence of 1821, participating in the Hellenic Revolutionary fleet. "

Productivity, trade, private and communal education developed and increased the living standard on Ithaca. The British, as they did in other colonies or protectorates, brought a great deal of good along with the 'bad' aspect of having power imposed by a foreign nation. However, in this instance, the Ithacans may not have thought much about the 'bad' since they had been held by foreign powers for centuries. And overlords and colonial masters who were less enlightened than the British.

Photo: Gladstone Cemetery where Charlie Ross was buried in 1907.

The British may have been patronising, superior and at times oppressive but they also built roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and established trade links as well as developing agriculture and industry. Ithaca became a better place under British rule and young Charlie would never have known anything different. By the time he was born the British had been in charge for thirty-four years and his parents would also have known nothing other than the British as colonial masters. Having taken them from the French, perhaps Charlie's grandfather had welcomed British rule.

In 1864 Britain relinquished control and Ithaca, along with the other Ionian Islands, became a part of the new Greek State. Perhaps it was at this point that Charlie Ross decided his future lay elsewhere. He may also have joined the British Merchant Navy and anglicised his name at that point. Although the family story was that he came out on his 'uncle's ship' which could have meant, if there is a connection with the Rossolimos family of Ithaca, this being the most likely Greek surname for him, that his uncle owned ships and found him a job. Then again, his uncle could also have been in the British Merchant Navy and helped his nephew to find a job.

Charlie Ross had grown up as an Ithacan during a time of British rule but the Ionian islands, of which Ithaca is a part, had always had a hybrid nature and while culturally there was much in common with Greece, historically, culturally and linguisticall there was also much more at work than Greek culture and many inhabitants of the Ionian Islands were not Greek. Nearly half a century of British management, and exposure to Anglo and European lovers of Greek culture in general and Homeric culture in particular, would have influenced the Ithacan people just as they had been influenced by other dominant cultures in the past.

For more than four hundred years the islands had been a Venetian colony and later was dominated by the French, the Russians and the Turks, all of whom introduced aspects of their own laws, forms of government, language and culture. During the centuries of Venetian and French rule, Ithacans in the higher stratas of society had inter-married and some had even converted to Catholicism.

It was the peasants who held to the Greek Orthdox Church and the Greek language and I have no reason to believe that Charlie Ross was descended from a peasant family, despite the potential connection with the rather more illustrious Rossolimos family. I could of course be wrong, knowing nothing much about Charlie Ross beyond the fact that he was Greek, that when he died he was well-liked and well-respected, and given the spelling of some of his children's names in the birth register - Clesanthows for Chrysantheous - he had an atrocious accent, also verified by family stories, and perhaps his reading and writing of English was not as good as it might have been, given his clear failure to correct the clerk in Clare, who took down the details of his son's birth. One would assume, if he had good written English, that he knew how to spell Chryantheous!

But Charlie Ross, like the land of his birth, was something of a mystery and a contradiction. He too had been formed through a variety of influences; that of the culture of the land of his birth; the culture of a sailor who spends years 'roving;' and the culture of the land where he chose to settle, and no doubt, the culture of the woman he married.

The Ionian Islands were indeed hybrid: a mixture of numerous influences and contradictions, and  Ithacans, like other Ionians were in many ways a 'mongrel' race where East met West and where the mix of mind and culture was broad and sometimes deep.

While admiring Greek culture and Ithaca's Homeric traditions, the British saw the Ionians as very different to themselves. The 'superstition, ignorance, duplicity, violence, excitability and subservience to demagogues were the opposite of industrious and upright Anglo-Saxons who possessed self-control, reason, honesty, love for order and freedom, manliness, domesticity, and respect for the law and sobriety.' (http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/19415/1/19415.pdf)

Through British eyes the Ithacans would have been half-civilized and unstable; childlike even, and therefore not capable of looking after themselves. Young Charlie could not have held too many grudges given that he finally made his home in a very Anglo atmosphere, another British colony, Australia.

But there were others who saw the Ionians differently and perceived a nobility of character. Whether this was sourced in romantic notions drawn from Homeric history, as was alleged by some, it would still have softened the general view. Some saw them as respectable, possessed of moral virtue, skill and sincerity - not to mention independence of mind, a quality which young Charlie must have had.

Photo: (Left) Flora Ross Swincer who was said to be the spitting image of Charlie Ross with her mother, Hilda Rose Jones Ross and her sister, Jessie Ross Sands. Jessie clearly takes after her mother's side of the family.

How much he brought from the land of his birth to Australia it is not yet possible to say and may never be known. While he had an anglicised name, from what we can find, from the very beginning, he gave all of his children Greek names. One wonders why, having given up his Greek name, he continued a tradition to give his children names which would always set them apart from Anglo society to varying degrees, some names being more unusual than others and unusual first names, being more of a burden than unusual second names such as my grandfather was given in Vangelios.

His wife after all was Australian of English descent and a devout Anglican from what can be seen and yet either he had the 'power in the house' or she, for some reason agreed because it was important to him, and their five children all carried Greek names in a very Anglo culture. It was not as if Charlie was part of a Greek community in Gladstone as he could or might have been in Port Pirie. He was probably the only Greek in town! It is not so much unusual that he anglicised his name but it is unusual that he did so and then called his children by Greek names.

There are a variety of reasons why he might have changed his name to an English 'version' and it is an assumption that it was simply Anglicised instead of changed completely: 1. he joined the British Merchant Navy and it was easier with an English name or they Anglicised it for their records; 2. he was 'running away from something' and an English name was harder to trace, 3. he changed his name or Anglicised his name when he 'jumped ship' in South Australia because it made him harder to find.

Photo: (Left) the youngest son of Charlie Ross, Spiros Andrew with his wife and daughter. Spiros looks less like the Atkins side of the family and more like my grandfather so clearly he takes after his father.

My gut instinct is that (1) is the correct answer because it would mean he had gotten used to being called Charlie Ross and it was too hard to change it but as part of Greek tradition and in honour of the land of his birth, his long-lost or perhaps now dead parents, he gave Greek names to his children.

Theory (2) might be possible because we have no way of knowing if his children were given family names which might be traceable. I suspect they were but until we trace his Greek family we do not know.

Theory (3) seems unlikely because a Greek deserter who has jumped ship and changed his name so he cannot be found is unlikely to draw attention to himself by giving his children Greek names.

As it stands, it is the names of the children which may yet open the way finding the Greek family of Charlie Ross, particularly if he has followed traditional naming practices, although it is pretty clear, if the information on his marriage certificate is correct, that he was no purist. 

Traditionally, Greeks named their first son after his paternal grandfather, and  if this is correct and if Charlie was the first-born, which we donot know, and his name is an Anglicisation, then his paternal grandfather was Carolus.

But with Christie given as the father's name on the marriage certificate for Charlie Ross and Mary Atkins, it is clear Charlie was his own man - or perhaps he did not want to draw attention to his family in case there were other Greeks around, for the first-born was John (Iaonnis) Constantinus.

But if there is any relevance to his naming practices then the first daughter, Georgina Anastasia is named after her paternal grandmother, so Christie was married to an Anastasia or a Georgina but the former is more likely because Georgina could easily be English; the second son, my grandfather, was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Vangelios, which could either have been Carolus or Vangelios and then we have a third son, Chrysantheous Christus, who shares a name with his paternal grandfather and finally, Spiros Andrew who, as the fifth child, gets one Greek and one English name.

So questions are raised because Charlie has chosen to use English names and yet has given all of his children at least one Greek name, and he has apparently not followed Greek naming tradition.

One presumes that the giving of Greek names is in a bid to honour the land of his birth and his family. So why not follow naming tradition? He has Christie as his father's name on his marriage certificate, presumably from Christus or possibly Chrysantheous, but he gives these names to his third son and calls his first John with the Greek Constantinus as a middle name.

Photo: Charlie's daughter, Georgina Anastasia Ross Hillard circa: 1960. Auntie Teenie looks like the Atkins side and a lot like her grandfather, Edward Atkins to my mind.

The only reason for not following tradition is to make it more difficult, perhaps impossible, for him and his family in Australia to be linked to family in Greece, something any Greek could do, knowing naming traditions and something which would provide identity for an Ithacan, between Charlie and his Greek family, should an Ithacan end up in Gladstone. Given that Charlie had spent a few years in Port Pirie he would know there was a large Greek community in that town and amongst them, a few Ithacans.

The rest of the children's names may well follow naming tradition but probably they do not. Although he has, by the fourth child, the courage to use his father's name ... that is if the name Christie on the marriage certificate is correct.

There seems only one reason why Charlie would not want clear links with his Greek family and that would be if he had another wife or even children there. Given Greek culture it is hard to believe he would not want his parents to know where he was, but he might not want a wife to know he was a bigamist.

Having said that, the fact that Charlie spent a few years, probably at least five, in Port Pirie and it makes one wonder why, if there were a first wife, he did not send for her. Perhaps he was just forgetful and there is nothing manipulative about his naming practices. Time will hopefully tell. Although he would have been the only Greek in town since Greeks did not begin arriving until the 1890's.

Photo: John Constantinus, the eldest son of Charlie Ross. John or Jack Ross is not clear here but the shape of the face is more Atkins than Ross.While I have yet to truly 'find' Charlie Ross I do know more about him than I did when I began and I certainly know a great deal more about the Mashford and Atkins sides of the family which is a huge bonus.

But the absolute facts about Charlie Ross are still few:

1. He was born in Greece in 1849. He went to sea as a young man, circa: 1869, sometime between the ages of 17 and 23. The earliest date would be 1866.
2. He became a sailor and spent some years at sea 'roving' and having adventures - minimum of five, maximum of ten.
3. He settled in Port Pirie after arriving in Australia. The earliest date would be 1871 and the latest, circa: 1877, for enough years to be 'remembered.' 
4. He moved to Gladstone circa. 1886 and worked there as a fishmonger as he had in Pirie.
5. He married Mary Atkins in 1888. He gave his father's name as Christie on the marriage certificate.
6. He had five children to whom he gave at least one Greek name.
7. He anglicised his Greek name or adopted an English name after arriving in Australia or the Port Pirie report would have included another name for 'old Pirieans to recognise.
8. The Greek names he chose for his children, Constantinus, Anastasia, Vangelios, Chrysantheous, Christus and Spiro are likely to have family connections.
9. He died in 1907 and was buried in an Anglican cemetery.
10. His grand-daughter Flora RossSwincer was said to be the spitting image of him.
11. He had a very strong accent given the poor phonetic spelling of some of his children's names on birth records.
12. He was obviously an amiable and personable character, as stated in his obituary, given the fact that the death notice was reprinted in the Port Pirie newspaper more than twenty years after he had left the town, for the benefit of those who had known and remembered him fondly.
13. There is no record of him ever taking up citizenship. (Perhaps evidence that he did jump ship.)

Photo: Charles Vangelios Ross, Charlie's second son, in his First World War uniform. Charles looks to be a mix of both parents with the 'shape' from the Atkins side and other features from his father, if his daughter Flora was truly the 'spitting image' of her Greek grandfather and we have no reason to believe she was not.

Other possible facts drawn from family history are:

1. He was born on Ithaca, one of the Ionian Islands.
2. He 'jumped ship' at Port Germein and so entered Australia illegally.
3. He came out on his 'uncle's ship.'
4. He spoke a number of languages.

Photo: Charles Vangelios Ross in his fifties looking more like the Greek side of the family but with the Atkins shape face from his grandfather, Edward. Elizabeth Mashford also had a 'long' face.

So the questions which still need to be answered are:

1. What was his Greek Christian name and surname?
2. Was he born on Ithaca? If so where?
3. Is his English name an anglicisation of his Greek name or something he adopted?
4. On what date and just how did he arrive in Australia.

Port Germein was established in 1878 and the jetty built in 1881 while Port Pirie was founded as a settlement in 1845 and the town was surveyed in 1871. In 1876 it had 971 people.

The Greek presence in South Australia was said to begin in 1842 when Georgios Tramountanas arrived at Port Adelaide with his brother Theodore who went on to Western Australia. George born in Athens in 1822 settled on the Eyre Peninsula. But it would be another seventy years before there was a documented Greek presence in Port Pirie. Naturalisation papers for South Australia have a Peter Warrick, who anglicised his name, working as a carpenter in Port Pirie in 1892. He had arrived in the colony in 1875 but there is no record of where he was living between then and 1892. It may have been Port Pirie in which case Charlie would have had a companion and perhaps one, who, having anglicised his own name, encouraged him to do the same.

So the earliest Charlie Ross, given his age, could have arrived in Port Pirie would be 1871 although if the 'jumping ship at Port Germein' story is correct it would have been 1878. This would have given him eight years in Port Pirie before he moved to Gladstone, long enough to be 'remembered' by a few 'old ones' at his death in 1907.

Personally I would be happy to have the Greek names which would open so many more doors in the land of his birth. I am still hoping for that one lost photograph to appear with the name on the back. Either that or a distant Greek relative looking to find out what happened to a great-uncle who sailed away never to be seen again.

The few facts we have about Charlie Ross

Photo: Ithaca, a stony, rocky island with beautiful beaches.

Many old Pirieans well remember the subject of this paragraph, which is taken from the Areas' Express :
 

" It is 'with sincere regret " we have to record the death of Mr Charles Ross, of this town after protracted illness from asthma, &c.

Deceased was born 58 years ago, and, when a young man left his native land— Greece—and after a roving career during which he had his fair share of adventures, came to South Australia and settled at Port Pirie. Eventually he came to Gladstone, where, - for more than twenty years he has carried on his vocation as a purveyor of fish, &s. Although - taking" no part in public affairs, he,- by his unostentatious but genial manner, won a large circle of friends, who sadly deplore his death which took place on Sunday.

The remains were - interred in the Gladstone Cemetery on Monday, the Rev J. Raymont officiating. . The greatest sympathy- Is felt for the widow—-a.daughter of Mrs Atkins —and her, five children." ~

18th September 1907, Port Pirie Recorder from the Areas Express.

I have been drawn back to this having found it again on Trove while researching Edward Atkins and Hannah McLeod.

While it is good to read that great-grandfather Charlie Ross was well respected and even better, well liked, in Gladstone it also makes me think that somewhere there is an earlier story about him which throws more light onto his 'roving career' and his 'fair share of adventures. I just have to find it when I have a chance to get to Gladstone and go through the copies of the old Areas Express which was the local newspaper at the time.

The age of fifty-eight fits with a birth year of 1849 and given that the story says he left his native land as a young man, as opposed to boy, it indicates that he did not join the merchant navy as a twelve or thirteen year old (or younger) as was common, but in his late teens or even early twenties. And that makes me wonder if he was married when he left Greece.

Taking twenty as a 'round' age for a young man, it means he left in 1869 and given that he spent more than twenty years in Gladstone, he had to arrive in that town by 1886 and he had to have spent long enough in Port Pirie to be remembered by 'older Pireans.' A minimum of five years, although more is likely, would have had him arrive in South Australia in 1881 and possibly a few years earlier. That would have given him ten years for a 'roving career' which is probably more than enough.

So what was happening on Ithaca  and in Greece, during the 1860's which might have prompted a young man to embark on a 'roving career' as a sailor?  Ithaca had come under English rule some sixty years earlier so young Charlie, or perhaps Carolus, would have had a reasonable education.

The "United States of the Ionian Islands" was formed, governed by a Constitution imposed in 1817 where Ithaca was represented by one member (in the Ionian Senate). During the years of the Greek Revolution against the Turks, Ithaca offered hospitality and medical care to the revolutionaries and Ithacans took part in the War of Independence of 1821, participating in the Hellenic Revolutionary fleet. "

Productivity, trade, private and communal education developed and increased the living standard on Ithaca. The British, as they did in other colonies or protectorates, brought a great deal of good along with the 'bad' aspect of having power imposed by a foreign nation. However, in this instance, the Ithacans may not have thought much about the 'bad' since they had been held by foreign powers for centuries. And overlords and colonial masters who were less enlightened than the British.

Photo: Gladstone Cemetery where Charlie Ross was buried in 1907.

The British may have been patronising, superior and at times oppressive but they also built roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and established trade links as well as developing agriculture and industry. Ithaca became a better place under British rule and young Charlie would never have known anything different. By the time he was born the British had been in charge for thirty-four years and his parents would also have known nothing other than the British as colonial masters. Having taken them from the French, perhaps Charlie's grandfather had welcomed British rule.

In 1864 Britain relinquished control and Ithaca, along with the other Ionian Islands, became a part of the new Greek State. Perhaps it was at this point that Charlie Ross decided his future lay elsewhere. He may also have joined the British Merchant Navy and anglicised his name at that point. Although the family story was that he came out on his 'uncle's ship' which could have meant, if there is a connection with the Rossolimos family of Ithaca, this being the most likely Greek surname for him, that his uncle owned ships and found him a job. Then again, his uncle could also have been in the British Merchant Navy and helped his nephew to find a job.

Charlie Ross had grown up as an Ithacan during a time of British rule but the Ionian islands, of which Ithaca is a part, had always had a hybrid nature and while culturally there was much in common with Greece, historically, culturally and linguisticall there was also much more at work than Greek culture and many inhabitants of the Ionian Islands were not Greek. Nearly half a century of British management, and exposure to Anglo and European lovers of Greek culture in general and Homeric culture in particular, would have influenced the Ithacan people just as they had been influenced by other dominant cultures in the past.

For more than four hundred years the islands had been a Venetian colony and later was dominated by the French, the Russians and the Turks, all of whom introduced aspects of their own laws, forms of government, language and culture. During the centuries of Venetian and French rule, Ithacans in the higher stratas of society had inter-married and some had even converted to Catholicism.

It was the peasants who held to the Greek Orthdox Church and the Greek language and I have no reason to believe that Charlie Ross was descended from a peasant family, despite the potential connection with the rather more illustrious Rossolimos family. I could of course be wrong, knowing nothing much about Charlie Ross beyond the fact that he was Greek, that when he died he was well-liked and well-respected, and given the spelling of some of his children's names in the birth register - Clesanthows for Chrysantheous - he had an atrocious accent, also verified by family stories, and perhaps his reading and writing of English was not as good as it might have been, given his clear failure to correct the clerk in Clare, who took down the details of his son's birth. One would assume, if he had good written English, that he knew how to spell Chryantheous!

But Charlie Ross, like the land of his birth, was something of a mystery and a contradiction. He too had been formed through a variety of influences; that of the culture of the land of his birth; the culture of a sailor who spends years 'roving;' and the culture of the land where he chose to settle, and no doubt, the culture of the woman he married.

The Ionian Islands were indeed hybrid: a mixture of numerous influences and contradictions, and  Ithacans, like other Ionians were in many ways a 'mongrel' race where East met West and where the mix of mind and culture was broad and sometimes deep.

While admiring Greek culture and Ithaca's Homeric traditions, the British saw the Ionians as very different to themselves. The 'superstition, ignorance, duplicity, violence, excitability and subservience to demagogues were the opposite of industrious and upright Anglo-Saxons who possessed self-control, reason, honesty, love for order and freedom, manliness, domesticity, and respect for the law and sobriety.' (http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/19415/1/19415.pdf)

Through British eyes the Ithacans would have been half-civilized and unstable; childlike even, and therefore not capable of looking after themselves. Young Charlie could not have held too many grudges given that he finally made his home in a very Anglo atmosphere, another British colony, Australia.

But there were others who saw the Ionians differently and perceived a nobility of character. Whether this was sourced in romantic notions drawn from Homeric history, as was alleged by some, it would still have softened the general view. Some saw them as respectable, possessed of moral virtue, skill and sincerity - not to mention independence of mind, a quality which young Charlie must have had.

Photo: (Left) Flora Ross Swincer who was said to be the spitting image of Charlie Ross with her mother, Hilda Rose Jones Ross and her sister, Jessie Ross Sands. Jessie clearly takes after her mother's side of the family.

How much he brought from the land of his birth to Australia it is not yet possible to say and may never be known. While he had an anglicised name, from what we can find, from the very beginning, he gave all of his children Greek names. One wonders why, having given up his Greek name, he continued a tradition to give his children names which would always set them apart from Anglo society to varying degrees, some names being more unusual than others and unusual first names, being more of a burden than unusual second names such as my grandfather was given in Vangelios.

His wife after all was Australian of English descent and a devout Anglican from what can be seen and yet either he had the 'power in the house' or she, for some reason agreed because it was important to him, and their five children all carried Greek names in a very Anglo culture. It was not as if Charlie was part of a Greek community in Gladstone as he could or might have been in Port Pirie. He was probably the only Greek in town! It is not so much unusual that he anglicised his name but it is unusual that he did so and then called his children by Greek names.

There are a variety of reasons why he might have changed his name to an English 'version' and it is an assumption that it was simply Anglicised instead of changed completely: 1. he joined the British Merchant Navy and it was easier with an English name or they Anglicised it for their records; 2. he was 'running away from something' and an English name was harder to trace, 3. he changed his name or Anglicised his name when he 'jumped ship' in South Australia because it made him harder to find.

Photo: (Left) the youngest son of Charlie Ross, Spiros Andrew with his wife and daughter. Spiros looks less like the Atkins side of the family and more like my grandfather so clearly he takes after his father.

My gut instinct is that (1) is the correct answer because it would mean he had gotten used to being called Charlie Ross and it was too hard to change it but as part of Greek tradition and in honour of the land of his birth, his long-lost or perhaps now dead parents, he gave Greek names to his children.

Theory (2) might be possible because we have no way of knowing if his children were given family names which might be traceable. I suspect they were but until we trace his Greek family we do not know.

Theory (3) seems unlikely because a Greek deserter who has jumped ship and changed his name so he cannot be found is unlikely to draw attention to himself by giving his children Greek names.

As it stands, it is the names of the children which may yet open the way finding the Greek family of Charlie Ross, particularly if he has followed traditional naming practices, although it is pretty clear, if the information on his marriage certificate is correct, that he was no purist. 

Traditionally, Greeks named their first son after his paternal grandfather, and  if this is correct and if Charlie was the first-born, which we donot know, and his name is an Anglicisation, then his paternal grandfather was Carolus.

But with Christie given as the father's name on the marriage certificate for Charlie Ross and Mary Atkins, it is clear Charlie was his own man - or perhaps he did not want to draw attention to his family in case there were other Greeks around, for the first-born was John (Iaonnis) Constantinus.

But if there is any relevance to his naming practices then the first daughter, Georgina Anastasia is named after her paternal grandmother, so Christie was married to an Anastasia or a Georgina but the former is more likely because Georgina could easily be English; the second son, my grandfather, was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Vangelios, which could either have been Carolus or Vangelios and then we have a third son, Chrysantheous Christus, who shares a name with his paternal grandfather and finally, Spiros Andrew who, as the fifth child, gets one Greek and one English name.

So questions are raised because Charlie has chosen to use English names and yet has given all of his children at least one Greek name, and he has apparently not followed Greek naming tradition.

One presumes that the giving of Greek names is in a bid to honour the land of his birth and his family. So why not follow naming tradition? He has Christie as his father's name on his marriage certificate, presumably from Christus or possibly Chrysantheous, but he gives these names to his third son and calls his first John with the Greek Constantinus as a middle name.

Photo: Charlie's daughter, Georgina Anastasia Ross Hillard circa: 1960. Auntie Teenie looks like the Atkins side and a lot like her grandfather, Edward Atkins to my mind.

The only reason for not following tradition is to make it more difficult, perhaps impossible, for him and his family in Australia to be linked to family in Greece, something any Greek could do, knowing naming traditions and something which would provide identity for an Ithacan, between Charlie and his Greek family, should an Ithacan end up in Gladstone. Given that Charlie had spent a few years in Port Pirie he would know there was a large Greek community in that town and amongst them, a few Ithacans.

The rest of the children's names may well follow naming tradition but probably they do not. Although he has, by the fourth child, the courage to use his father's name ... that is if the name Christie on the marriage certificate is correct.

There seems only one reason why Charlie would not want clear links with his Greek family and that would be if he had another wife or even children there. Given Greek culture it is hard to believe he would not want his parents to know where he was, but he might not want a wife to know he was a bigamist.

Having said that, the fact that Charlie spent a few years, probably at least five, in Port Pirie and it makes one wonder why, if there were a first wife, he did not send for her. Perhaps he was just forgetful and there is nothing manipulative about his naming practices. Time will hopefully tell. Although he would have been the only Greek in town since Greeks did not begin arriving until the 1890's.

Photo: John Constantinus, the eldest son of Charlie Ross. John or Jack Ross is not clear here but the shape of the face is more Atkins than Ross.

While I have yet to truly 'find' Charlie Ross I do know more about him than I did when I began and I certainly know a great deal more about the Mashford and Atkins sides of the family which is a huge bonus.

But the absolute facts about Charlie Ross are still few:

1. He was born in Greece in 1849. He went to sea as a young man, circa: 1869, sometime between the ages of 17 and 23. The earliest date would be 1866.
2. He became a sailor and spent some years at sea 'roving' and having adventures - minimum of five, maximum of ten.
3. He settled in Port Pirie after arriving in Australia. The earliest date would be 1871 and the latest, circa: 1877, for enough years to be 'remembered.' 
4. He moved to Gladstone circa. 1886 and worked there as a fishmonger as he had in Pirie.
5. He married Mary Atkins in 1888. He gave his father's name as Christie on the marriage certificate.
6. He had five children to whom he gave at least one Greek name.
7. He anglicised his Greek name or adopted an English name after arriving in Australia or the Port Pirie report would have included another name for 'old Pirieans to recognise.
8. The Greek names he chose for his children, Constantinus, Anastasia, Vangelios, Chrysantheous, Christus and Spiro are likely to have family connections.
9. He died in 1907 and was buried in an Anglican cemetery.
10. His grand-daughter Flora RossSwincer was said to be the spitting image of him.
11. He had a very strong accent given the poor phonetic spelling of some of his children's names on birth records.
12. He was obviously an amiable and personable character, as stated in his obituary, given the fact that the death notice was reprinted in the Port Pirie newspaper more than twenty years after he had left the town, for the benefit of those who had known and remembered him fondly.
13. There is no record of him ever taking up citizenship. (Perhaps evidence that he did jump ship.)

Photo: Charles Vangelios Ross, Charlie's second son, in his First World War uniform. Charles looks to be a mix of both parents with the 'shape' from the Atkins side and other features from his father, if his daughter Flora was truly the 'spitting image' of her Greek grandfather and we have no reason to believe she was not.

Other possible facts drawn from family history are:

1. He was born on Ithaca, one of the Ionian Islands.
2. He 'jumped ship' at Port Germein and so entered Australia illegally.
3. He came out on his 'uncle's ship.'
4. He spoke a number of languages.

Photo: Charles Vangelios Ross in his fifties looking more like the Greek side of the family but with the Atkins shape face from his grandfather, Edward. Elizabeth Mashford also had a 'long' face.

So the questions which still need to be answered are:

1. What was his Greek Christian name and surname?
2. Was he born on Ithaca? If so where?
3. Is his English name an anglicisation of his Greek name or something he adopted?
4. On what date and just how did he arrive in Australia.

Port Germein was established in 1878 and the jetty built in 1881 while Port Pirie was founded as a settlement in 1845 and the town was surveyed in 1871. In 1876 it had 971 people.

The Greek presence in South Australia was said to begin in 1842 when Georgios Tramountanas arrived at Port Adelaide with his brother Theodore who went on to Western Australia. George born in Athens in 1822 settled on the Eyre Peninsula. But it would be another seventy years before there was a documented Greek presence in Port Pirie. Naturalisation papers for South Australia have a Peter Warrick, who anglicised his name, working as a carpenter in Port Pirie in 1892. He had arrived in the colony in 1875 but there is no record of where he was living between then and 1892. It may have been Port Pirie in which case Charlie would have had a companion and perhaps one, who, having anglicised his own name, encouraged him to do the same.

So the earliest Charlie Ross, given his age, could have arrived in Port Pirie would be 1871 although if the 'jumping ship at Port Germein' story is correct it would have been 1878. This would have given him eight years in Port Pirie before he moved to Gladstone, long enough to be 'remembered' by a few 'old ones' at his death in 1907.

Personally I would be happy to have the Greek names which would open so many more doors in the land of his birth. I am still hoping for that one lost photograph to appear with the name on the back. Either that or a distant Greek relative looking to find out what happened to a great-uncle who sailed away never to be seen again.

A bird's eye view of Ithaca and Gladstone

The world is an amazing place. I can sit in Australia and, with Google Maps, take a bird’s eye view of Ithaca and of Gladstone. I am wondering from which village Charlie Ross came and if my suspicion that it might have been situated in similar countryside to Gladstone could be right.

Anogi, one of Ithaca’s oldest villages and the original capital seems to be a reddish dirt, rocky kind of place, situated in the centre of the island. It’s name means Upper Land and it is the second most important medieval settlement of the island. The highest point on Ithaca is Mount Anogi, just over 800 metres above sea level.

Anogi is also a place which has links with the Rossolimo family. Iaonis Rossolimo, son of Dimitri of Coriana, was a priest in Anogi in the 18^th Century. It’s all conjecture but possibilities have to be pursued until they are denied or dead in the water.

Gladstone is not in the mountains but it is not far from the Flinders Ranges and would have been one of the biggest towns in the area when Charlie Ross arrived. More to the point, it was well situated on the rail network which meant he had ready and easy access to the coast. And using Google Maps to look at Port Street, opposite the Gladstone Railway Station, where Charlie lived and worked as a fishmonger, it is easy to see the ‘pink-dirt’ similarity with Anogi in the photograph above. This is of course all conjecture but solving any mystery requires a great deal of conjecture and sifting of information in order to find the pieces which will complete the puzzle.

I assumed that Port Street would be commercial but clearly it was not. There appear to be a couple of houses across the road from the railway station so Charlie must have conducted business from home. Why did I not think of that? We make so many assumptions based on the world we know. Of course he would not have had the money to rent a home and a shop. I am beginning to think he must have had a cart which he could stack with boxes of ice so he could take his fish around to potential buyers in Gladstone.

He must have done this very early in the morning in summertime because the days get so hot that his ice would have been melting by lunchtime. I wonder if this is very different to how things might have been done on Ithaca? Fish would have been carried to inland towns like Anogi in carts I presume. I wonder how many presumptions will be found wanting by the time I have finished this quest? No doubt quite a few.

A few steps on and still so far to go

It is interesting to think that the experiences of my great-grandparents would influence their children and their descendants, if only because we absorb cultural attitudes both consciously and unconsciously. I have absorbed from my parents and they from theirs in turn.

I have a better idea of what my great-grandmother’s English ancestry has brought to me because I have spent long periods living and staying in England. But I have never been to Greece and so have little idea of what it means to be Greek or what ‘Greekness’, should there be such a word, which I doubt, may have come down through the family.

But I do remember a realisation which came to me when I was 19 about how ‘Greek’ my father was in nature. I was living in Melbourne and my flatmate, Maureen, had a Greek boyfriend, Kon. I spent a great deal of time with the two of them and with his friends and family and that was my first taste of Greek culture and life. Just watching the Greek men I could not help but see how very like them in manner and attitude was my father.

I suspect he also looked a little like his paternal grandfather because he had the same broad, almost round face, stocky build and black hair .... straight, not curly. And his eyes were the deepest brown, almost black and when he got angry, which he did often, they seemed to burn with deep, ancient fire. But, when my father grew a beard it was ‘red’, an inheritance no doubt from his Scottish maternal grandmother and so may have been the anger. My father's maternal grandmother, Florina Muirhead had a tongue like a fishwife and was a force with which to be reckoned. Her gentle, English husband, Robert Jones (Jonas) who had been abandoned by his Jewish family because he married her, was said to be no match for his feisty, Scottish wife. I am sure though, that he loved her as much for the feistiness which Scots women seem to have as for anything else.

We are, in essence, the end-product of all that our ancestors have been. I remember a Canadian friend saying to me once, that she had been shocked to read a book about cultural inheritance and to see how clearly she was more the product of her ancestors than her environment. She had grown up in Scotland and emigrated to Canada as a young woman.
She saw herself as Scottish although her grandparents had been Irish. It was only when she read the book that she saw how Irish she really was in nature and that ancestral inheritance over-rode much of the Scottish childhood environment and the Canadian adult experience.

But when I looked at my flatmate’s Greek boyfriend, and his brother, and his friends, I had none of this insight into cultural inheritance. I merely saw that my father was very like them in the way he saw the world, in the way he saw women and in the way he saw himself. It was probably the first time that I had insight into him and the point at which I began to understand, and to forgive, who and what he was.

And what was it that I saw in him and these Greek men? I suppose what I would call traditional and conservative values particularly in regard to women and the role that a man sees himself playing as a ‘protector.’ I thought my father was just old-fashioned and dictatorial but at 19 I began to see he was just ‘Greek.’

It was not that I had not been exposed to Greeks.... they were part and parcel of everyday life in Australia through the corner delis and the ubiquitous Greek fish and chip shops, but it was the first time that I had mixed socially with Greeks. The Greeks, like many other immigrant communities, kept to themselves a lot with inter-marriage often not beginning until the third generation. No doubt one of the reasons was that few Greek women would learn English and most of their husbands would always speak in heavily accented English ... as did my great-grandfather. It was not that they were not friendly, nor sociable, but more that it easier to socialise where they could speak Greek. To that degree they were no different to any of the other immigrant cultures which have arrived on Australian shores.

It is more than 150 years since the first Greek set foot in Australia and the biggest wave of migration arrived after 1940 in the wake of the Second World War. It was a Greek, in fact, who first wrote about the existence of a great unknown continent to the south of India although Ptolemy was probably drawing upon even older Greek writings about lands at the other end of the earth.

The Greeks have always had the sea in their blood although when the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453 it served to confine Greek ships to the Meditteranean. Although Greek sailors were free to travel far afield to find a ship and that is exactly what they did. My great-grandfather amongst them.

The first Greek book to mention Australia was written in the late 17^th Century by a Greek priest, Meletios, who later became Archbishop of Athens. New Holland was mentioned under the title of ‘Unknown Lands’, which was followed by a speculative discussion about the Earthly Paradise.

Did young Charlie, or Carolus, dream about the Great South Land as he grew up on Ithaca? Did he always want to leave his island home or was he forced, like to many, to take to the sea to earn a living?

The story was that he was sailing on his uncle’s ship when he deserted in Australia. I had always thought this meant his uncle was also a sailor and it was he who got the young Charlie a job. Although he was not so young when he jumped ship. But if the name is Rossolimos it adds a completely different dimension to the story for some members of the family were rich and powerful ship-owners. Was Charlie a poor relation who was given a job by a rich uncle? It’s possible, but then many things are possible, in fact almost all things are possible in ancestry research and therein lies the problem.

There’s a story that a sailor from the island of Ydra, named Damianos Ghikas, was captured by Algerian pirates and in turn captured by a British warship and taken to Gibraltar in 1802. He was then put on a convict ship bound for Sydney because he was believed to be an Algerian pirate. He worked for five years as a shearer and managed to send messages back to Ydra, addressed to the chief magistrate, by stuffing them into bales of wool being exported to England. Eventually one of his messages got through and contact was made with the Governor of New South Wales who set Damianos free. He returned, so the story goes, a rich man having saved all of his convict wages.

But the real story is that Australia’s first Greek immigrants were nine young sailors from Ydra who robbed a British ship and were then captured and tried for the crime. Ydra, or Hydra, is like Ithaca, a part of the Ionian Islands group. The court acquitted two and found the other seven guilty of piracy. Seven were sentenced to death, but mercy was recommended for four. WilliamHuski~on the Secretary for the Colonies and a known philhellene, was instrumental in having the sentences reduced to transportation to New South Wales - three for life, and four others for fourteen years; and so, along with 200 other convicts, the seven Greeks arrived in Port Jackson on 27th August 1829, the date which marks the beginning of Greek settlement in Australia.

Interestingly, to me anyway, is that my son shares the name of the possibly mythical Damianos. I wanted to give my son a Greek name and originally thought of Christos. But names are always shortened in Australia and Chris did not feel right. I have no idea why, at 22, I wanted to keep a Greek connection but my husband went along with it and eventually we settled on Damon. Well, the name Damon actually came to us from the American journalist, Damon Runyon, and, as we were both journalists, it seemed an appropriate choice. But it is also a Greek name.

It is derived from Greek, damao, meaning ‘to tame or to subdue.’ According to Greek legend, Damon and Pythias were friends who lived on Syracuse in the 4^th century BC. When Pythias was sentenced to death, he was allowed temporarily to go free on the condition that Damon take his place in prison. Pythias returned just before Damon was to be executed in his place and the king was so impressed with their loyalty to one another that he pardoned Pythias. Because of this the name Damon also means ‘constant.’ The word also derives from ‘daemon’ which means a spirit; someone part mortal and part god.

Some of the Greek convicts were eventually granted the right to return home but two of them opted to stay in Australia and became our first Greek settlers. All of this was nearly fifty years before Charlie Ross would decide to do the same thing. And by the time that he did, Greek settlement in Australia had been flowing for nearly forty years.

The Gold Rush was to fuel the real flow of migration, particularly for Greek sailors and fishermen, so many of them serving on British ships ... the British ruled the Ionian Islands from 1809 to 1864 ....or struggling to make a living on their island homes. No doubt the plan was not to travel half way around the world and settle down, but to make money and return home. ‘Jumping ship’ was a renowned pastime for sailors, whether Greek or not, long before Charlie Ross took the leap.

There are records of one of his fellow islanders, Andreas Lekatsas, whose descendants say he jumped ship in Melbourne in 1851 and made for Ballarat. One doubts that three-year-old Charlie would have taken much note of any stories of such exploits, but nineteen years on it would be a very different story.

When Andreas returned to Ithaca in 1870 his tales of prosperity inspired his nephews to go out and start shops and cafes in Melbourne. Island life and village life meant close-knit families and communities where many if not most were related by marriage or blood in some way and everyone knew everyone else’s business. Of course Charlie, now in his early twenties, would have heard stories. Although ,I doubt that he had any real plan to end up in Gladstone, where he was probably the only Greek ‘in the village’ for most of the time that he lived there.

And while, my exposure to the Greek community in Melbourne in the early 70’s made me aware ... not to mention a little shocked ... that the Greek way was to ‘send home’ for a good Greek wife for their sons, this was clearly not an option for the first settlers. Charlie was not alone in marrying ‘out’ and like most Greeks before him, would opt for an English-Scottish-Irish girl.

Neither was he alone in anglicising his name. Most of the early Greek settlers changed, shortened or anglicized their names. Thus Lekatsas becomes Lucas, Lalel~s becomes Lawler, Servetopoulos becomes Service, Sikiotis becomes Scott, , Mavrokefalos becomes Black, Argyropoulos becomes Fisher.... and probably Rossolimos becomes Ross.

It is hard to know how many of Charlie’s countrymen were in Australia during these early years. Many records of birthplace did not indicate ethnic origin. Greeks born in the Turkish-ruled provinces of Greece, such as Crete, Epeiros, Macedonia and Thrace, or in Asia Minor, Cyprus, or Egypt would probably not have been recorded as ‘born in Greece’. And neither do religious records give a clear picture of the number of Greek Orthodox Church adherents in Australia until well into the twentieth century.

Given that Charlie’s burial records listed him as Protestant, no doubt most Greek men, marrying non-Greek wives, would do as Charlie had done. Whether it was because they did not care enough to lay down the law like a good Greek husband it seems that most took on their wife’s religion. Religion, or rather the handing down of religion, was, and remains in many cultures, a mother’s duty. And women, then as now, are more likely to be more religious than their husbands. Whatever Charlie’s Ross’s religious beliefs may have been he ended up in a Protestant Grave. Although a cousin did tell me that her grandmother, Charlie and Polly’s daughter, Georgina Anastasia, or Auntie Teeny as we called her, always said the family were devout Anglicans.

The guesstimates are that the colony may have had as many as 200 Greeks in the 1850s; 300 to 400 in the 1860s; 400 to 500 in the 1870s; 500 to 600 in the 1880s when Charlie Ross arrived and nearly 1000 towards the end of the century. By the time that Charlie died in 1907 there would have been barely more than a thousand Greeks from one end of the huge island continent of Australia to the other. Most of them would have been in New South Wales and Victoria, with barely a sprinkling in South Australia. The earliest records show that the first Greeks in South Australia arrived in about 1860 but they stayed in the ports and remained very few in number. He probably was the only Greek in Gladstone in his lifetime but that is only a guess on my part. A reasonably well-educated guess however.

Most of these early Greek settlers were islanders from Ithaca and Kythira , but not all of them. Settlers came from at least twenty-three of the Ionian and Aegean islands and a much smaller number from the Peloponnisos and other places. In years to come, the fact that so many came from the islands became politically important because the islands were traditionally republican and so, in the First World War, Australia’s Greeks, almost to a man, sided with Venizelos and Britain, not with the pro-German King Constantine.

Charlie Ross would not live to see any of this but no doubt he would have been proud to see his sons go off to fight on what he would have believed to be the ‘right side.’ Twenty-three year old Charles Vangaleos, my grandfather, would serve in the Australian Army's 16^th Battalion in WW1 and eighteen-year-old Chrysanthous Christus would serve in the 32^nd Battalion. Chrysanthous, or Christie as he was known, would marry in England in 1919 and bring his English bride back to Gladstone. He would use my grandfather's name of Charles on his marriage certificate because he did not like the name Chrysanthous. And perhaps because he had a sense of humour. Christie was also marrying a Jones' girl. My grandfather, Charles Vangelios had married Adelaide born, Hilda Rose Jones on September 1, 1917 and Chrysanthous Christus married Alice Maud Jones on a chilly English Christmas Day in 1919. As far as we know there is no connection between the two families although, in that synchronicitous way of ancestry research, I have since been in touch with Alice's great-niece, Cathy Ritter in the UK because it turns out that she is related by marriage to the wife of Spike Jones who is my third cousin. In tracing her ancestry Cathy came upon Spike, who has done brilliant work as a family researcher for the Jones side of our family, only to find that she had no blood connection to him but she did to his relations by marriage, the Ross family of Gladstone.

In ancestry research the trails weave and turn and wind around and around and the unlikely and the impossible join forces to bring unexpected links.

In another 'connection' across the years, my grandfather would fight in Belgium and, because of that, but for reasons not explained to the family, his youngest daughter, my Aunt Jessie, would receive the middle name of Belgian.

And, while he would not live to see it, one of his grandaughters would live in Belgium for more than two years. In 1986 I moved to Antwerp with my husband and family without knowing at the time that my grandfather had been there before me. Just as I had not known that living in Port Pirie and working across the mid-north, I was retracing the steps of my ancestors.

Life was hard for everyone in the 19^th century and no doubt even harder for those from an alien culture with a different language and as often as not, a poor capacity to communicate in the lingua franca, English. Most of the early Greek settlers, like Charlie, led lives of hardship , scattered over enormous distances through the isolated and strange Australian bush. They were far from their native villages, their families and their Church, strangers to Anglo-Celtic customs, and rarely able to communicate with their kin or even with each other. No doubt many of them lived their lives with varying degrees of homesickness.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Charlie chose to set up shop as a fish-seller was because two, three, or more times a week he would have to make the journey to the coast where he could buy his fish and once more, smell the sea as he had done as a small boy on Ithaca. Did he stand in the busy port and soak up the smells, sights and sounds of his childhood? For a boy from Ithaca, living so far inland, must have been a challenge.

I have no idea if he ever wanted to return but I doubt that he could have afforded to do so even if he had wished. With five children to raise there would be little chance of saving the enormous sums of money required to make such a journey just for a visit. And memories of poverty, no doubt worse than he experienced in Australia, would remind him of the uncertainty of life on Ithaca should he even dream about uprooting his family and returning home.

Or perhaps Charlie Ross had found who he wished to be on the dusty plains of South Australia’s mid-north. Perhaps he slept more peacefully in the shadows of the Flinders Ranges, whose ancient rock has been above sea level far longer than many other places on earth. Perhaps with Mary, or Polly as she was known, he found love and companionship in a way that he had never expected; and fulfilment in his Australian-born children who would never see his homeland nor understand his language or his culture. But perhaps it was all enough, even though his final resting place would not be on the windswept, rocky hills of Ithaca but in Plot 224, in the red-dirt dust of Gladstone Cemetery.

What's in a name?

A child’s given name in Greece is nearly always a grandparent’s name. But not always. The first-born son often receives the paternal grandfather’s name and the first daughter often receives the maternal grandmother’s name. A child is practically never named for a living parent.

The operative words here are ‘often’ and ‘practically never.’ Charles and Mary had five children. So the firstborn, Constantinus John may carry his paternal grandfather’s Christian name. Or he may not.

The second-born, my grandfather, Charles Vangaleos clearly carries his living father’s name which is contrary to Greek tradition although here we also have the ‘practically never’ qualification which means that ‘practically sometimes’ it happens.

The third child was Georgina Anastasia who may well have been given her maternal grandmother’s name. Anastasia is however more likely to be the Greek and Georgina may well be from her mother’s English heritage. Again, it is all guesswork.

The fourth child and third son is Chrysantheous Christus. The Christus may well be from his paternal grandfather if the name given on Charles and Mary’s marriage certificate, Christie, is correct.

And the fifth and final child is Spiros Andrew in what looks like a Greek/English mix.

In terms of tracing my great-great grandparents in Ithaca, the possible name leads are Charles, Constantinus, Vangaleos, Anastasia, Chrysantheous, Christus and Spiros.

The only thing of which I can be sure is that when Charles Ross signed his name on December 26, 1888 at his marriage to Mary Atkins, he instinctively and no doubt nervously, wrote Ros in Greek. His Greek surname must therefore begin with these three letters and probably begins with Ross. I rather like the fact that Ros is my name and that I have taken up this search to find Charlie Ross.

The family stories were that his name was Roustopolous or Rosstopolous but neither of these names exist on Ithaca or surrounding islands. Raftopolous was a possibility until I saw the birth certificate.

My aunt tells me that her grandfather had a very heavy accent so it is hardly surprising that children and grandchildren did not have a clear understanding of the pronounciation of the name. The closest I have come to a possible surname is Rossolimos, which, surrounded by a heavy accent, could, to English ears and English bias ... all Greek names end in topolous (which means son of actually) appear to be Roustopolous.

And here begins the mystery and the journey for beyond wanting to know what my great-grandfather’s Greek surname really was, it seems that Rossolimo is a very noted surname and not the sort of thing which one takes on as a good guess. Not that I intend to settle for guesses but I have to begin with Rossolimo as it is my best bet.

The name can be traced back to the island of Cephalonia, off the west coast of Greece, as far back as 13th century, where the Rossolimo clan owned and controlled vast tracks of land. There is a belief that this clan are the descendants of Hughes de Sully, baron and “officer general” from Normandy, in the service of Charles d’Anjou, king of Naples. Hughes commanded the Neapolitan army, which King Charles sent to help the Nicephore empire against the Byzantine emperor Michel Paléologue. In 1281, Hughes, who was thought to be a member of the Blois-Champagne clan, was taken prisoner by the Byzantines and imprisoned in Constantinople. Because of his red hair, Hughes de Sully was generally called “the red de Sully”, which in Greek became “Ros Solimo”. From this, the Greeks named his descendants “Rossolimo”. (The source of this genealogical information is the three-volume “Livre d’or de la noblesse ionienne” by Eugène Rizo-Rangabé, Paris 1926)."

The variations of the name include: Rossolimo, Rossolimos, Rosolimo, Rosolimos, Rosolimou,

Historically this name is found in two countries, namely Greece (Ροσολίμοs) and Russia (Россолимо). It is believed that all persons carrying this name originate from the same bloodline, (although this has been disputed).

The literature records the following information:

• Nicolo Rossolimo was the Governor of the island of Ithaca 1634.

• Commodore Rosssolimo led Princes Claudia of Denmark’s army into Alexandria 1739 – 1741.

• Two brothers Constantin and Todorin settled in Ithaka in the late 1700’s. (We have a Constantinus)

• Iaonis Rossolimo, son of Dimitri of Coriana, was a priest in Anogi, Ithaka, travelled to Constantinople in 1803.

• Basilio Rossolimo (1822-1897) was a ship owner and travelled to Russia

• Dr Gerasimo Rossolimo (1824-1889) practised medicine in Russia

• A Spiridon Rossolimo (1862-1923) was a merchant in Russia. (We have a Spiros or Spiridon)

• A Dr. Spiridon Rossolimo qualified as a medical doctor in 1852

• A Dr. NicolÓ Rossolimo practised as a medical doctor in Marseille in 1877.

. And possibly, a Carolus Rossolimo who jumped ship in Port Pirie in the 1880’s, caught the train to Gladstone, changed his name to Charlie Ross, married Mary Atkins and spent his life as a fishmonger.

Or not!

I have just used the tarot to ask if my great-grandfather jumped ship in 1888 and got Yes. He married in December 88 and it did occur to me that he would not have spent long in the country before finding someone to marry. I looked up the Police Gazette for that year and one of the examples it cited was:

At Willunga, 14th instant, on the bodies of R. Waugh, Robert Muir, George Irvin, W. Oemirch, H.J.T. Corke, F.C. Blackman, George Carder, F.C. Carter and David Blair, late of the ship "Star of Greece". Verdict-"Death by attempting to swim ashore from the above ship."

Now, the Star of Greece sank off the coast of South Australia and is one of our most famous shipwrecks. It was laden and on its return voyage to England when it went down. It may have docked at Port Germein to load wheat. Was that when my great-grandfather decided to jump ship? Intuition? Fate? Such a scenario is not unlikely. The Port Germein deserter’s lists of January-July 1888 may well hold a clue.

But it is a stretch. I have connected with the word Greece in the ship’s name but then it was not a Greek ship. The Greek community of Calcutta made a flag for it to fly but that is the closest it gets to anything Greek.

It has however made me think that my other assumption is that Charlie Ross was based on Ithaca as a sailor but of course he may have been based anywhere... England for example. He could very easily have been on the Star of Greece. I need to find the crew lists.

As the records show, ‘The Star of Greece, was 1,289 gross tons, length 227ft x beam 35ft x depth 22.2ft, iron hull, three masted full rigged ship, was built 1868 by Harland & Wolff, Belfast for James P. Corry & Co. Launched on 19th Sep.1868, she was a fast ship and sailed London - Calcutta via the Cape in 79 days and her fastest passage from the Lizard to Melbourne took 76 days. Her best London - Calcutta - London voyage took 5 months 27 days including 10 days at Calcutta and this has never been beaten by a sailing ship. For this, she mounted a brass gamecock at the truck of her mainmast Cock of the Route. Another feature is that the ship always flew a silk Greek flag on the foremast in port, which had been made and presented by ladies of the Greek community in Calcutta.

In August 1883 she sailed through a sea of pumice after the violent eruption of Mount Krakatoa while some hundred miles away in the Indian Ocean. She arrived in the Hooghly in 1885 with her coal cargo on fire, but was brought in safely. Transferred to the Australia service in 1888, she left Port Adelaide on 12th July with a cargo of wheat and on 13th July, 25 miles off course in a fierce gale and hailstorm, and with her anchors down, she was wrecked on a reef outside Port Willunga, Gulf of St.Vincent.

The iron hull of the ship broke in two amidships at 2.00am, upon the reef 200 metres from shore. Huge seas broke over her and a strong rip of back-wash ran from the wreck. The alarm was not raised until after 6am, when the Harbourmaster at Port Willunga, Thomas Martin, learned of the disaster from a boy and went to the wreck, armed with a small telescope. The crew was still onboard the stricken vessel.’

The irony was, as the story goes, that the sailors didn't like leaving shore on the 13th, so they decided to leave shore on the 12th because of superstition. And they left at about 10 o'clock that night only to be shipwrecked the following day, the 13^th.

Only 11 persons survived of a crew of 28. Some of the names of those who died include Captain H. R. Harrower, Second mate W. A. Waugh, R. Muir, (a working passenger), F. C. Blackman (cook and steward), C. Irvine (able seaman), W. Oermich (able seaman), H. J. R. Cork (ordinary seaman), C. Carder (cabin boy), F. C. Carter (crewman), D. "Andrew" Blair (a small boy) and A. Orson (able seaman). The bodies of W. J. Miles (able seaman), J, Gatis (able seaman) and J. Airzee (or Airlie, able seaman) R. (Mc)Donald (or Donnell, carpenter), W. Parker (boatswain) and G. Carlson (sailmaker) were never recovered or able to be identified.

These are all English names but perhaps Carolus Rossolimos had anglicised his name long before arriving in Australia. He was said to speak five languages and, despite having a heavy accent, English was clearly one of them.

The Star of Greece belonged to the White Star Line, which also lost The Titanic.The wreck was sold for £105 and the cargo for £21. The figurehead is in Port Adelaide Maritime Museum.

But this may all be no more than diversion, distraction and downright fantasy. Therein lies the twisting path of ancestry research. Before dismissing this very convenient possibility I need to have a look at the crew list for the Star of Greece. I am not getting very far with online searches. This may require real effort when I am next in Adelaide.