An American Story, Revisited

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this column appeared in the July 2016 edition of Key Peninsula News.

Colvos Passage. I was intrigued. The name for the channel between Vashon and Southworth looked vaguely familiar and suspiciously Greek, or maybe Italian. I filed that away as something to investigate someday and moved on.

It was the summer of 1992, I was new to Washington, and on that Saturday I was on the ferry to the peninsula for a day of birding from the beach.

My interest in the name inevitably waned and finally went dormant until a few years later when someone gave me a copy of Murray Morgan’s “Puget’s Sound,” his history of Tacoma and the South Sound. There, on page 55, was the answer: Colvos Passage was named by Charles Wilkes, commander of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, after Passed Midshipman George Musalas Colvocoresses. Between 1838 and 1842 the U.S. Ex. Ex., as it came to be known, explored and surveyed Antarctica and the South Seas, sailing north and charting Puget Sound in the summer of 1841.

Described as “a Greek refugee from a Turkish massacre in 1822,” Colvocoresses, a likable fellow by all accounts, was nicknamed Colvo by the crew. That has to be one of the earliest examples of what happens to polysyllabic Greek names in English, a fate I have adamantly refused to yield to, well-meaning and reasonable though it may be.

As soon as I saw that name my jaw dropped. No way, I thought. A Greek name, fine, but that wasn’t just any Greek name. It was one I was very familiar with. Literally. It was the family name of my step-grandmother Tolya, someone I spent countless hours with growing up in Greece, listening to stories of the Colvocoresses clan and, while we were at it, playing solitaire and reading  French magazines. Because, grandma.

But was it the same family or just a coincidence? A quick email to a genealogy-obsessed uncle in Greece confirmed that yes, that was the same Colvocoresses family.

And with that, the distance that had inevitably come to separate me from my Greek roots in the decades since I left suddenly disappeared. Home was here – but also there. It’s often said that we’re all connected, but that takes away from the magic of unexpected discoveries like this when a name on a map rejiggers time and space and draws a line between two people across a span of almost 200 years.

Later in life, George wrote up a short autobiography for his family and children. The document tells his story. George Musalas Colvocoresses was barely 6 years old in the spring of 1822 when the horrors of war descended on his peace-loving island of Chios, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

It was the second year in the Greek fight for independence from the nearly four-century Ottoman rule. A prosperous island renowned for its mastic production and a favorite destination for English tourists in the early 1800s, Chios had always kept a low profile. Its Greek inhabitants were careful not to draw unwanted attention to themselves from the Ottoman authorities.

But the winds of revolution and liberation inevitably reached the island’s shores in March 1822, and the empire responded with unspeakable fury, laying waste to entire villages, by some accounts slaughtering as many as two-thirds of the island’s population of 120,000, and abducting women and children to be later sold as slaves deep in Anatolia. The catastrophic event was the subject in 1824 of the monumental painting “Scenes from the Massacre at Chios” by French painter Eugène Delacroix.

Young George was separated from his parents and taken up as a slave by a man he later described as “a fiend who called himself my master.” But he did not remain in bondage long; with the help of a friendly Ottoman soldier, his father, who had survived the massacre, tracked him down and bought him from the enslaver.

Like the rest of the world, America was gripped by the David-and-Goliath war of Greeks against the Ottomans. Groups supporting the war were formed in several American cities, and over the next five years until the end of the war at least 40 children, mostly boys, would be sent as refugees to the United States by their parents to be educated and maybe start a new life in a distant land shining bright with promise.

At the time, the American brig Margareta was anchored at the port of Smyrna across from Chios in present-day Turkey. Several families saw an opportunity; when the Margareta sailed back to its home port of Baltimore, eight Greek boys from the island were among the passengers. Including George.

In the United States, George was adopted by Capt. Alden Partridge, the founder of the military academy now known as Norwich University in Norwich, Vermont. He entered the academy and, after graduating, was appointed in 1832 to the U.S. Navy as a passed midshipman, an entry-level rank with a path to a lieutenant’s commission.

In 1838, George Colvocoresses was mustered on the Porpoise, one of the ships in the U.S. Ex. Ex. His book, “Four Years in the Government Exploring Expedition,” was published in 1855 and became a bestseller.

By any measure, George adapted well to his new country and served it with distinction, although promotion was slow. After 35 years in the Navy, he was promoted to captain on his retirement in 1867. His son, George Partridge Colvocoresses, who also served in the Navy and reached the rank of admiral, later suggested that his father’s slow advancement was due to “narrow national prejudice.” According to some, there were commercial interests in the United States that aligned with the Ottomans rather than the new nation of Greece.

So, next time you’re on the ferry across Colvos Passage, pause a moment for Passed Midshipman George Colvocoresses because, unlike so many who came to these shores before and after, his name is not forgotten.

Joseph Pentheroudakis is a linguist and award-winning historical feature writer. He lives on Herron Island.