The headquarters of the Kibbe Bros. Candy Co., 33-51 Harrison Ave. in Springfield, MA. Kibbe Bros. was one of the first American companies to be managed by a Greek immigrant, Eleftherios Pilalas, who originally came from the village of Vresthena, North of Sparta. Pilalas first went to Smyrna, New York (where he started the first Greek pastry/loukoumi shop in America with Panayotis Hatzitiris) and Boston before settling in Springfield. The website of the Springfield Cathedral of St. George says Pilalas was the first Greek in Springfield (arriving in 1884, although his passport application below says he arrived in 1877) and was instrumental in finding jobs for immigrant Greeks in the Kibbe and other companies he later owned. He married Catherine (26 years his junior) and had three children, Alexandra, Thalia and Miltiades. He later brought to the U.S. his brother Stavros (see the 1910 U.S. census information below).
Left, Pilalas’s 1898 passport application, which makes reference to Vresthena and his Springfield address of 96 Calhoun St. (Documents courtesy of ancestry. com)
Demosthenes Timayenis (1856-1918) (above) was one of four Timayenis brothers, sons of Athens University Professor Thomas and his wife Fotini. Demosthenes was born in Smyrna and was a successful businessman for the United Fruit Company. He married Alice S. Wason and once represented the interests of Turkey in Boston. He owned a rug store and the Vienna coffee house on Devonshire Street. He eventually became consul of Greece in Boston. His relationship with Boston’s Greek community was conflicted--he coordinated efforts to help Greeks join the Greek Army in the 1897 war against Turkey (see Boston Globe story below), but he angered Greek fruit vendors who accused him of high whole sale prices and struck against his company causing a considerable disturbance in downtown Boston (see Boston Globe article below). In 1912 he defended Greek strikers against Lancaster Mills in Clinton, MA, and took on the local police. Telemachus Timayenis was a foreign language professor in the Springfield Collegiate Institute, Springfield, MA, the New York Hellenic Institute and the Chautauqua (NY) School of Languages. He published several books on Greek history and language and was given the Royal Greek Cross by Greece’s King George for his contributions. In 1915 he returned the cross to protest King Constantine’s firing of Prime Minister Venizelos, “the choice of the people.” He published the Eastern-Western Review and he started the New York publishing house Minerva through which he published many anti-Semitic books including the 1888 The Original Mr. Jacob, which sold more than 200,000 copies. A third brother, Plutarch, lived in Boston and Savanna, GA, where he married May Silva Teasdale, and worked as a bookkeeper for import/export company Ralli Brothers (see “The Amherst Connection” elsewhere on this site). The youngest Timayenis brother was Nicholas, who committed suicide in Boston because he was not allowed to marry the woman he loved. She was deemed to belong to a lower class than the Timayenis (see Boston Globe article below). Below, D. Timayenis’s 1886 US passport application.

Eleftherios Pilalas

The Timayenis Brothers

Boston Globe, May 10, 1897. Consul Timayenis appeals to local Greeks to go back and help their country’s war effort.

Boston Globe, May 23, 1899. Greek vendors strike against Timayenis’s company and cause disturbance in downtown Boston. Three Greeks were arrested.

Telemachus Timayenis passport 1886 application. Note nose description: “Long.”

The tragic death by suicide of 19-year-old Nicholas Timayenis, youngest of the Timayenis brothers. It was reported by both The Boston Globe (front page) and The New York Times in May 1885.




Left:

Even The New York Times found the story “fit to print.” May 3, 1885.
















Below:

Another example of Greeks volunteering at Timayenis’s office to go back to Greece and fight. The Boston Globe.  April 24, 1897.