Documents of Macedonian Immigration

[Risto the Great]

I did not see Macedonian mentioned once in that Youtube production.
My name is Hristo Blindakis.

[TrueMacedonian]

page 175


Scopia??? Or Skopje???

[Bratot]

Registered as:
The Macedonian-American Society
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Columbus, Ohio
Organized March 9th, 1938







PREAMBLE
"We the Macedonians from Macedonia, part of the former Turkish empire, immigrants in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, associate ourselves together in a fraternal, non-political and non-ecclesiastical organization to be called the “Macedonian American Society Alexander the Great” of Columbus, Ohio."




Damn you Tito!

[Bij]

hey, what is colonel sanders doing in the Macedonian-American society?

[Daskalot]

Many Macedonians fled from the turmoil and fighting ravaging their native land to seek refuge in the United Sates of America.
They first set foot on Ellis Island, New York.

Here are 10 ship manifestos showing the Macedonians. The year of arrival is 1905.

I will continue to post ship manifestos in this thread, stay tuned.

Enjoy!

[Daskalot]

Info about the Manifesto:
Ship: La Gascogne
Arrival date: October 12th 1903

[Daskalot]

Info about the Manifesto:
Ship: Pretoria
Arrival date: November 1st 1907

[Dejan]

Well done Daskalot! The evidence must be shocking to our southern friends

[Pelister]

This document is interesting because it offers us an insight into how Macedonians are "lost" beneath the weight of various colonial classifiers.

In 1925 the Attorney Generals Deparment filed an investigation into emigrant workers, who had come to Australia expecting to find work, but did not, and who had become distressed about their unemployed status.

The title of file is "Greeks, Macedonians, Jugo-slavs - Unemployed".

I opened the file and found about seven pages of various lists and letters. There is a letter titled "Stranded Greeks in Melbourne" and several references in that letter to "Greeks and Yugoslavs" and even a list of the unemployed emigrants by name. That list is interesting in itself because all the names on it look Greek, and look Serbian, respectively. More interesting is that Mr. Gregarios Econmides "acted as spokeperson for his countrymen", and even provided the list of unemployed men to the officer investigating the mater.

In the letter (21st March, 1925) to the Secretary of the Home and Territories Department, Melbourne, titled "Stranded Greeks in Melbourne", the Officer investigating the matter in more detail had this to say about the list of unemployed "Greeks" (and "Yugoslavs") ...

The immigrants concerned are practially all natives of Macedonia. They are racially more Slavic than Greek, and have become subjects of Greece only during recent years. There has been a lack of sympathy and help extended to them by the Greek community in Melbourne.

With few exceptions these Macedonian immigrants are men under the age of thirtyyears and of an honest hardworking type, although in some cases of a low standard of intellect ...

Mr. Economides, who has acted as spokeman for his countrymen, has sufficient knowledge of English to enable these cases to be plainly stated ...

Just goes to show how easily Macednonians can be "lost" or "disappear" beneath the rather superficial markers imposed on them by Greek and Serbian colonial regimes.

It is interesting how if the matter had not been investigated in more detail, how these "natives of Macedonia" would have been lost to us, or worse been permanently labelled as ethnic "Greeks" and "Serbians".


National Archives of Australia, Item No. 429632

[Soldier of Macedon]

Pelister, that is a strong find mate, well done. Where can we access more, state library?