When visiting Kythera it is hard to resist the amazing aromas of freshly baked bread, paximadia and other delights enticing you into the bakeries of Potamos, Karava, Livadi and Karvounades. Today flour for baking is imported from the mainland, however this was not the case in the past.
It may not be apparent now but there was once an abundance of wheat grown throughout the island by farmers. My mother recalls how the Kytherian landscape used to glisten when the wind gently blew through the wheatfields before harvest time. The wheat was harvested and placed in an aloni (a threshing circle), where it was threshed to remove the husks from the rest of the stem. The wheat was then taken to one of the many watermills or windmills strewn around the island to be ground into flour which was used by the farmers and their wives to make bread, paximadia and pasta in wood-fired ovens and fireplaces.
During the Venetian and British administrations of the island from the middle ages until 1864, there was an abundance of water in the ravines of Milopotamos, Karava, Agia Pelagia , Oheles and Finikies, the last two located west of Logothetianika, resulting in construction of many water powered mills used to grind wheat into flour. Similarly, the windy conditions of Kythera also saw many windmills built throughout the whole island. Many mills were owned and operated by locals well into the twentieth century, but sadly with mass migration the bulk of these now lie abandoned and decaying or have disappeared crumbling over time or due to demolition, such as those in Potamos.
In 1841 a law passed in Britain saw the Kytherian church registry records become more detailed and fortunately for our genealogy research, occupations of men and some women were amongst the details appearing in the baptism and death records. In addition, we have also collated occupation information from other records at our disposal. In the case of mill operators, we found that most men lived in villages within close proximity to the locations of the mills. The names of the millers are numerous and appear in many village records around the island, however the majority found were from the villages of Milopotamos and surrounds, Logothetianika, Potamos and Mitata. Some of the surnames are Baveas, Fatseas, Karidi, Lianos, Malanos, Megalokonomos, Sofios, Stratigos and Zervos-Marousi. Feel free to search the birth and death records Amalia and I have read and translated into English which are loaded on the resource page of our website, to find out if you may have an ancestor who was a miller.
These written records bring a human connection to the remains of the windmills and watermills scattered around the island we see today, which together serve to remind us of a bygone era offering a glimpse into how our ancestors lived, worked and ate.
References:
Drakakis, Manolis ‘Ληξιαπχικο αρχειο Κυθηρων 1662-1864’, (Registry Archives of Kythera 1662-1864), in Επετηριδα των Γενικων Αρχειον του Κρατους των Ετων 1993-1996, (Yearbook of the General State Archives of the Nation 1993-1996), GAK, Athens, Library of the General State Archives of the Nation, 1997.
Greek State Archives of Greece, ‘αρχειομημον’, http://arxeiomnimon.gak.gr,
Kasimatis, Giannis G Οι υδρομυλοι των Κυθηρων (The Watermills of Kythera), Athens, Αδελφοι Βλασση, 2005.
Leontsinis, George N. The Island of Kythera A Social History (1700-1863), Athens, National and Capodistrian University of Athens Faculty of Arts S Saripolos library, 1987.
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