The Melas family

[Euklid]

http://www.laconia.org/elafonisos_Castle.jpg

The tower of Melas’ family in Elafonisos.

http://www.laconia.org/Elaf_Kato%20Nisi.htm

The Melas family reaches to the Stratigopoulos family in Epirus.

You were right Vulgaroktone about Epirus, i couldnt remember.

[Tsontos]

thanks euklid, very interesting. Quite an illustrious family it seems. transilvania, austo-hungary, mani, epirus and macedonia have had their inlfuence!

[Euklid]

You are welcome man, its my pleasure, my family currently lives in Elafonisos, and we are very close with these people.

My best friend and 3rd cous. is a Psaromatis. That is a half Melas and half Mavromichales, unwanted union, banished in Elafonisos.

[akritas]

Very intresting Euklid.Below a quote from Douglas Dakin (The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, page 140) as about Melas family:

Pavlos Melas was born at Marseilles in 1870, his father, Michael Georgios Melas, being a wealthy merchant of Epirote origin. (67) In 1876 Michael Melas left Marseilles and established himself in Athens, where in 1878 he became treasurer of the National Defence (Ethniki Amena), an organisation supporting insurrectionary movements in Crete, Epirus and Thessaly. His son Pavlos (a lively, sensitive, generous, clever and adventuresome boy) thus grew up in a family which by tradition was intensely patriotic and in the atmosphere of the 'Great Idea.''(68) When still quite young he was to discover in the cellar of the family house in University Street, Athens, stacks of arms which his father was sending to Crete. As he grew older he became aware of Greek irredentist aspirations and often imagined himself as an andartis. On 15 September 1886 he began the five-year Spartan existence at the military academy (Evelpidon), then in the Piraeus, passing out as a second-lieutenant in the artillery in August 1891. The next year he married Natalia,(69) daughter of Stefanos Dragoumis(70) (1842-1923), a politician whose family came from Bogatsiko in Macedonia and who had been Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Charilaos Trikoupis(71)

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(67).
His mother was Helen Voutsina, daughter of a Greek merchant at Odessa. Pavlos's grandfather, Georgios Melas, was a member of the Filiki Etairia and a close collaborator of one of the founders, Xanthos.
When the Revolution of 1821 broke out he fled from Constantinople (he had moved there from Jannina) to Odessa.
His younger brothers went to fight in Greece with their uncle (on their mother's side) the famous Souliote, Marko Botsaris. Georgios Melas had four sons, who were all great patriots; Leon (1812-79), scholar and minister, and author of the famous book, Gerostathis, an heroic Greek history dealing with the heroes of '1821'; Constantine; Vasilios; and Michael (1833-97), Pavlos's father.

(70.)
His grandfather, Markos Dragoumis, had been Secretary to the Hospodar of Wallachia. His father, Nicolas, had served under Capodistrias and had later become Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[Amarantos]

Articles dedicated to Pavlos Melas and the Macedonian Struggle from Kathimerini. (http://www.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_kathglobal_2_17/10/2004_1283357)

http://photo.kathimerini.gr/kathnews/photos/17-10-04/17-10-04_1283357_131.jpg
The sons of Michael G. Melas on the eve of the Greek/Turkish war of 1987.Standing from right:Leon, Pavlos, Konstantinos, Vasileios (sitting on the left) and Georgios (sitting in the middle).