In late May 1976, Eleni Matsikas, wife of Spyros Elia Spyrakopoulos, invited Mary LaViolette Nicolopoulos, wife of Eleni’s first cousin, John Antoniou Nicolopoulos, to assist her in copying the records of Karytaina for their better preservation and in order to develop family trees for the families of the town, which had once been a bustling metropolis.

Eleni spoke with Father Vasilis, priest in Karytaina since 1971, and he allowed them access to the church and its record books of births & baptisms, marriages, and deaths. The cover had come off the oldest record books with the result that some of the pages were very worn and some information was missing.

At first Eleni and Mary were challenged reading the old Greek calligraphic writing as they wrote each entry on a single index card, but were soon well-acquainted with the writing style. When they realized that the index card method was too time consuming, they switched to making audio recordings in the church which they transcribed back at home, and Eleni would go back to the church to verify the accuracy of the transcriptions while Mary copied the transcriptions clearly into notebooks.

Then Eleni obtained access to the records held at the Community office. They transcribed the Community’s book of civil marriages and the its book of burials. They also photocopied the male register for both the town and the county and the 1914 family registry, the original of which can no longer be located.

Eleni’s mother-in-law, Penelope Tangalaki, widow of Elias Spyrakopoulos supported the project by hosting Eleni and Mary in her home all the summer of 1976.

Eleni and Mary also made audio recordings of their interviews with some of the older Karytaina residents, including Stavroula Sotiropoulou who was 107 years old and lived until she was 113.

All these documents and cassettes were brought to Athens and stored in the Psychico home of John Nicolopoulos for safe-keeping.

In September 2021, Mary had John test his DNA with Ancestry.com. Mary built John’s tree and then expanded it to include the whole village since she realized everyone was related. Soon Mary began collaborating with one of John’s close matches, Dena Palamedes who already had experience with genealogical research.

After John’s passing in 2022, Mary made the documents available for digitization and Dena scanned the records. Gregory Kontos of Greek Ancestry graciously provided a state-of-the-art scanner and Greek Ancestry carried out the onerous task of indexing the scanned records.

Records Digitized in 2023:

1. Code A1-A3 Local church death records of Karytaina 1884-1980
2. Code B1-B3 Local church birth records of Karytaina, 1884-1959
3. Code Γ1-3 Local church marriage records of Karytaina, 1885-1977
4. Code Δ Municipal Register (Dimotologio),1914 family census of the community of Karytaina, 1840-1913.
5. Code Η Civil marriage records of the community of Karytaina, 1885-1901, 1916-1970
6. Code Θ Community death records of Karytaina, 1914-1946
7. Code Σ Male Register of the Municipality of Gortyna, 1845-1893
8. Code T Male Register of the Community of Karytaina, 1848-1939

These digitized records are being indexed and transcribed by GreekAncestry.net and individual records can be accessed through their “Search” page.