Does anybody know this guy?
by Jack Neely
The names on the stones at Old Gray Cemetery yield hints about Knoxville's forgotten diversity. There are lots of Scottish and English names, of course. But there are also hundreds of stones inscribed with non-Anglo names: German, French, Italian. Most of the stones don't indicate a place of birth, but of those that do, more than 200 indicate a birthplace in Europe. You can read all of them clearly, except perhaps for one.
It's a simple marble slab standing by itself in the quiet, shadowy southwestern corner of the graveyard, near the lane. The stone is not inscribed in English; the stonecutter didn't even employ a familiar alphabet. Though the marble is weathered, you can make out a lambda here, a sigma there, an upsilon or two. It's entirely in Greek.
The words at the top appear to be Enoade Keitai. But underneath that phrase is another that, as you might be able to decipher with a little frat-house Greek, seems more recognizable as a name: Nikolaos Kolokythas. The last date is 10-23 Dekembrioy 1905.
Greeks have been Knoxville business owners, doctors, lawyers. They've been elected to public office. They support a local Greek Orthodox church, and host what has become Knoxville's biggest annual ethnic festival, which takes place this weekend. Greeks have been our most conspicuous European ethnic minority for over 80 years. The Greek community is believed to date to the arrival of Nicola Cazana in 1915.
In any Knoxville Greek family, 1905 is prehistory. There are only a few other Greek-alphabet tombstones in Knoxville; this may be the earliest one. I've spoken with several old-timers and haven't yet found any who have ever heard of this stone, or of any Knoxvillian named Kolokythas.
With the help of my friend Deena Kaiousias and some of her contacts in the Greek community, we got the stone translated. That first phrase, Enoade Keitai, long presumed by graveyard archivists to be a proper name, isn't. It means 'Here is buried.' The stone reads:
Here is buried
Nikolaos Kolokythas
Born in Viniane
of the Eyrytanias in 1861
Died in Knoxville
on 10-23 December 1905
May the Earth Lie Lightly Upon Him.
That last line could pass for poetry, but who was intended to read it? Those who didn't have families or friends were generally buried with no stone at all: gravestones are for the living, and this one seems designed to communicate with living Greeks.
Educated Knoxvillians of 1905 were better versed in the Greek language than we are—the language was a required course at some local schools. It's not that strange to imagine a local stonecutter who knew some Greek. But the inscription implies that Nick had Greek friends or family here who wanted to remember him in their native tongue.
The stone offers a few clues. Sometimes known as the "Switzerland of Greece," Evrytania is in the rugged, central part of the country known for forestry and a grape-based moonshine known as tsipouro. Viniane, or Viniani, is a tiny, remote town with few amenities at the bottom of the Rekka Ravine.
Deena reports that Kolokythas means "producer of squash." She directed me to local dentist Jim Kotsianas, who is a member of the local chapter of the Evrytanian Association of America, which is based in Charlotte. He says Evrytanians account for a large number of Greek families in the Southeast, including several of the better-known Greek families in Knoxville.
Kotsianas says Kolokythas is a common name there. He has in-laws in Greece named Kolokythas. There are some Kolokythases in the Carolinas, he says, but he's never heard of one here.
The double date seemed confusing to me until Deena suggested it could have something to do with the old eastern, or Julian calendar. I checked, and sure enough, the difference between the Julian calendar and our Gregorian calendar was exactly 13 days; it seems likely that December 10 was the Julian phrasing of Kolokythas' death, the one favored at home; December 23 was local time.
What happened to him? Library research rewards us with puzzling dead ends. The Single Graves ledger at McClung lists a Nicholas Kolkitas (a simplified spelling); his burial date is Dec. 24, 1904, a year before what's inscribed on the stone.
Newspapers of that day were usually pretty thorough describing a death, especially an untimely one. But look at the old Knoxville Journal and Tribune and the Knoxville Sentinel, around the likely dates in December of both 1904 and 1905: there's no mention of any Greek immigrant who died at the age of 44. Moreover, there's no mention of anyone by that last name, or any obvious variant, in the City Directories of that era. Nikolaos Kolokythas may just be one of those characters we'll never know.
But this weekend, raise a glass of ouzo—or tsipouro, if you can find it—to this stranger who died a long way from home.
January 2, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 1
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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