From,

/download/DiscoverYourRootsHandout.pdf

1. DO THE SIMPLE THINGS FIRST.

These include:

What is your parachoukli.. (Put a reference to it at Names - subsection - Nicknames.)

Photographs of your grandparents - with brief background

Photographs of your parents - with brief background

Photographs of you and your siblings.

Write brief Oral histories. For example - working in the shop. Oral histories from the second generation should number 10,000 but in fact number ZERO.

If your parents owned a shop/business provide a picture

2. CREATE A PROGRAM OR SCHEDULE...

...by which to plan your kythera-family submissions. Make a very firm commitment that on this Sunday - from 1.00 pm - 6:00 pm I am going to lock myself away in my computer room, and I WILL submit 10 photographs and oral histories etc that pertain to my mother.

Good discipline = some/many entries.

3. YOUR BEST RESEARCH TOOLS....ARE THE OLDER/OLDEST MEMBERS OF YOUR OWN FAMILY.

Talk to them. Interrogate them. Don't be put off by the inevitable responses such as "that stuff is not very important/interesting/relevant, etc".

4. DO NOT WAIT TO FINISH....
...THE MAGNUM OPUS - BECAUSE MOST MAGNUM OPUS'S NEVER GET FINISHED. THEY
NEVER EVEN GET HALF-FINISHED.

Instead use the "bits and pieces" - "little by little" approach of the web-site to build up into a larger picture.

A good parable for this hierarchic thinking - the parable of the good watchmaker - (who makes his watch in small assemblies) - was created by Herbert Simon, and promoted by Arthur Koestler.

Read this below. Lets be smart Kythera-makers - not dumb ones.

5. IN LIEU OF OLD/CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS. BE AWARE OF QUICK-FIRE RESEARCH METHODS WHICH GIVE GOOD RESULTS.

It is important not to get "stymied" or "blocked" when researching genealogy, because disillusionment can lead to abandonment.

THERE ARE SO MANY WEB-AIDS IN THE 20TH CENTURY - THAT RESEARCH SHOULD NEVER BE THWARTED.

[SEE LIST WHICH IS APPENDED BELOW.]

Blind Watchmaker parable:

Koestler, Arthur. Janus. A Summing Up. 1976. Hutchison of London.
Simon, H.J. Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 1962. Vol 106, no.6.

"One of my favourite examples to illustrate the merits of hierarchic order is an amusing parable invented by Herbert Simon...The parable concerns two watchmakers, Hora and Tempus. Both make watches consisting of a thousand parts each. Hora assembles his watches bit by bit; so when he pauses or drops a watch before it is finished, it falls to pieces, and he has to start from scratch. Tempus, on the other hand, puts together sub- assemblies of ten parts each; ten of these sub-assemblies he makes into a larger sub assembly of a hundred units; and ten of these make the whole watch.

If there is a disturbance, Tempus has to repeat at worst nine assembling operations, and at best none at all. If you have a ratio of one disturbance in a hundred operations, then Hora will take four thousand times longer to assemble a watch - instead of one day, he will take eleven years. And if, for mechanical bits, we substitute amino acids, protein molecules, organelles, and so on, the ratio between the time scales becomes astronomical.

This is one advantage of employing the hierarchic method. The second is, of course, the incomparably greater stability and resilience to shock of the Tempus type of watch, and its amenability to repair and improvement.

Simon concludes:
"Complex systems will evolve from simplem systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting complex forms in the former case will be hierarchic. We have only to turn the argument round to explain the observed predominance of hierarchies among the complex systems Nature presents to us. Among possible complex forms, hierarchies are the ones that had the time to evolve."

Simon and Koestler use the parable to explain the emergent properties of life in the process of evolution'.

The same principles apply for the instigation, emergence, and increasing complexity in the evolution of kythera-family.

Start small...work modular...work smart...get big.


Helpful Website Addresses

Research Helpers

[Can you add to this list?]

For the Society of Australian Genealogists

http://www.sag.org.au/

For the Ryerson Index
[Internet Registry of deaths in Australian newspapers]

http://www.rootsweb.com/~nswsdps/papers.htm

For the National Library of Australia's guide to family history and genealogy on the internet:

http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/genelist.html

[To look for current relatives, try the Australian White Pages. The directory covers every area in Australia].

http://www.whitepages.com.au/wp/busSearch.jhtml

From Odyssey Magazine:

http://www.daddezio.com/grekgen.html

Greek genealogy homepage. The first name translator is somewhat helpful, but its usually last names people are looking for, and keying in "Jim" brought up "Dimos" but not the most common, Dimitri.

http://www.daddezio.com/genealogy/greek/records/index.html

How to search in Greece, with lots of relevant info on the places to search and what they're called in Greek.

http://daddezio.com/catalog/grkndx09.html

- helpful organisations links.

http://daddezio.com/catalog/grkndx03.html

- more Greek info and links.

http://www.genealogylinks.net/europe/gre.htm

- resources, links to websites.

http://genealogytoday.com/roots/xweb.mv?xc=Search&xo+all&xn=&kw=103&ct=&cpc=
-
resources, including records of the poor.

http://www.dimitri.8m.com/g_l.html

- Dimitri's link is from here.

http://www.dimitri.8m.com/g_l.html

- Dimitri's Surname Database.

http://dimitri.8m.com/surnames.html

- has names alphabetically with region and town of origin.

http://www.licacatsakis.com/

- an authoritative site on searching for your Greek roots in Greece, including a 167-page manual and place-name book.
P.O. Box 902246, Sandy, Utah 84090,

email: lica@licacatsakis.com.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~celebrities/

- celebrity family trees.

Lawyers:http://www.legalcrossroad.com/continents/europe/greece/, www.lawyers.gr

- slim pickings in English, but you can find 2 or 3.

http://www.xo.gr/en/index.jsp

- shows,140 in Athens, or ask someone in Greece to recommend one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Greece

- List of municipalities on line in Greece.

www.statistics.gr

- National Statistical Service (census) +30 210 328 9000.

http://www.goarch.org/

- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

http://www.ecclesia.gr/

- Orthodox Church of Greece.

http://infoukes.com/culture/lemkos/genealogy/galiciapl.html

- marriage and other records from Greek Catholic and Orthodox parishes.

http://www.patriarchate.org

- Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople - for Greeks who lived in Turkey.

http://www.ime.gr

- Organisation for Asia Minor Greeks - it has a database of names.

Ship registries

Many now make you pay to search, including census records. But they have free trials, so if you want to get in and out, perhaps that may be enough.

www.genealogy.com has a 14 day trial

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/

- the site seemingly has every descent but Greek, i.e. ethnic immigration. You also have to key in an exact name, so if it changed....This also doesn't help much for Greek characters, the translations of which are stunning.

http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tocanp01.shtml

- can enter a surname for ships to
Canada from 1400-1800.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~grcwgw/imig/1892c.txt

- has the passenger lists for 1892
Greeks to America - first and last names, ages, and where they were from.

http://www.daddezio.com/genealogy/ships/index-gr.html - ship passenger arrivals. Has a
search for ship names and over 890 passenger lists. You have to search by vessel or port.

http://www.immigrantships.net/index2.html

- A better site - can do it by name as well.

http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/5767.htm

- Passenger and Immigration
Lists Index (PILI) which has immigration, passenger and naturalisation records of people going to the US and Canada between the 16th and mid-20th centuries.

Forums

http://feefhs.org/gr/grrl/grrl.html

- this one has some heart-wrenchers.
http://genforum.genealogy.com/greece/ - another one, also with good info like: "For everyone
doing research on Chios families, visit the Koraes library basement Tuesday/Thursday 9am-noon.
The library is in Chios, in town (Hora), they are very helpful. I was there about 1.5 hours and they found me a bunch of dowry agreements/wills. You need to photograph them yourself (no photocopies & no flash)."

As of 3. July 2006:

Average number of pages visited per day: 3795

Number of different users using the site per day: 133

Total number of entries: 9333

Total number of comments added to entries: 320

Total number of Family Tree entries: 3830

Number of Guest Book entries: 424

Number of Message Board entries: 265

Average number of entries submitted per month: 259

Number of people who have registered on the site: 1570

Average number of registrations per month: 44

Estimated number of entries by July 2010 if the site continues to grow at the current rate: 31,110

The number of people who have made contact via Kythera-Family.net: ????????