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New immigration (1880s–1920s)

The Greeks of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania

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A small community that arrived not to mine but to feed the miners — bootblacks and candy-men who became restaurateurs, organized through AHEPA, and worshipped at Greek Orthodox parishes beyond the county line. Markers: verified · confirmed · corrects a common error · open/caution.

Overview

The Greeks were among the smallest of Schuylkill County’s immigrant communities — no Greek-born residents in the 1900 census, 46 in 1910, 158 in 1920 — but their story is sharply distinct from every group around them. They did not come to dig coal. They came, in the classic Greek-American pattern, to run shoeshine parlors, candy kitchens, fruit stands, and above all lunchrooms and restaurants that fed the mining towns. Almost uniquely among the county’s immigrant groups, their livelihood was the storefront rather than the colliery — and it proved remarkably durable: Greek-owned restaurants are documented in Pottsville from 1917 and in Mahanoy City into the 1960s, and the Greek-American fraternal order AHEPA kept a Pottsville presence in the county’s newspapers for three decades.

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville — “Documented History”; Food Passages — “Speaking Frankly: Greeks and Hot Dogs”; newspaper and census findings.

The Greek-American pattern, in a coal town

Roughly 400,000 Greeks arrived in the United States between 1900 and 1920, mostly single young men from rural villages — many pushed out of the Peloponnese (especially Arcadia, around Tripoli, and Laconia) by the 1890s collapse of the currant trade. They followed a well-worn occupational ladder: bootblack → fruit/candy → lunchroom → restaurant/diner. Shoeshine parlors were the entry point; confectionery and the “candy kitchen” came next (Greek confectioners typically traded under generic, assimilationist names — Ideal, Majestic, Sanitary, or simply “Candy Kitchen”); and the hot-dog lunchroom and mid-century diner were the destination. The era’s saying — “When Greek meets Greek, they start a restaurant” — reflected a real occupational concentration. Every rung of that ladder is documented in Pottsville, in the county’s best-recorded Greek institution.

Sources: Food Passages — “Speaking Frankly”; George Leber, History of the Order of AHEPA — “The Greek Immigrant in the United States”.

The Coney Island of Pottsville

The Coney Island was founded by Sarantos “Sam” Palles — born Σαράντος Παναγιώτου Παντελεάκης (Sarantos Panteleakis) in the Laconian village of Levetsova (today Krokees) in 1899/1900. He reached Ellis Island on March 7, 1916, at sixteen, sailing to his uncle, Anastasios “Tom” Sarantakos, in Pennsylvania, and climbed the classic ladder in record time: he shined shoes in his uncle’s shop (Boyd’s Directory of Pottsville, 1917, lists “Palles Sam, bootblack”), and within a year had opened “the famous Coney Island Hot Weiners” at 215 N. Centre Street (grand opening announced in the Pottsville Republican, November 8, 1918). The 1920 census records him as born in Greece, immigrated 1916, occupation “Restauranter,” industry “Lunch Room.”

Sam Palles died in Pottsville on May 6, 1928, of complications following an appendicitis operation — the death certificate records his age as 27. His widow, Antonia (Parthemos) Palles, carried the business on: 1930 Pottsville Republican fire coverage names the buildings as “owned by Mrs. Sam Palles, occupied by the Coney Island Restaurant,” and a 1936 advertisement reads “Coney Island Hot Weiners — With Real Chili Sauce — Established 1917.” The restaurant continued under Sam’s son Peter Sarantos Palles and still operates today at 2290 W. Market Street.

The record also shows the business seeding a wider Greek network: a 1990 Pottsville Republican feature records that Sam Palles helped other Greeks establish hot-dog businesses in Shamokin, Mahanoy City, and Tamaqua — the national chain-migration pattern operating inside the anthracite region, and the likely origin of the Greek-owned Mahanoy City restaurant the Record American covered in 1942 and 1967. Beyond the Palles family, the 1928 funeral record preserves more of the early community’s surnames — Gorant, Parthemos, Thomakes, Sterling — families whose fuller stories remain to be recovered.

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville — “Documented History” and home/heritage; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Certificate of Death, Samuel Pallas, file no. 54560 (d. May 6, 1928).

AHEPA: organizing a scattered community

The Greeks organized — as Greek-Americans did nationwide — through AHEPA (the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association), founded in 1922 in Atlanta, deliberately in the Ku Klux Klan’s headquarters city, as a response to anti-Greek boycotts and intimidation; its program was citizenship, assimilation, and “American Hellenism.” Its structure — local chapters grouped into numbered districts (eastern Pennsylvania is District 4) — reached the coal region early.

Schuylkill County had an active AHEPA chapter in Pottsville by the mid-1920s, documented in AHEPA’s official history through named Pottsville delegates across the decades — John Catsampas (1927–29), Anthony Laganis (1931–34), and J. Tsatsanifos (1934–39). AHEPA appears repeatedly in the county’s newspapers from the late 1920s through the 1950s, and the Pottsville Republican of July 1, 1947 ran a front-page “AHEPA Banquet” story — a district- or chapter-level event signaling a community substantial enough to fill a hall. The Pottsville chapter is now defunct: the current AHEPA District 4 directory lists 20 chapters and includes no Pottsville/Schuylkill chapter (nearest: Wilkes-Barre #55, Reading #61, Allentown #60, Harrisburg #64). Its original charter name and number were not recoverable online — the definitive record is the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s “Order of AHEPA Power District No. 4 records.” The nearest large, continuously documented chapter is Reading’s William Penn Chapter No. 61 (chartered 1925), in the same city that supplied Pottsville’s Greek Orthodox priest.

Sources: The Pappas Post — “The Klan vs. Americans of Greek Heritage… and the Birth of AHEPA”; Leber, History of AHEPA — 1927–29, 1931–34, 1934–39; HSP — Order of AHEPA Power District No. 4 records.

Faith: a Greek Orthodox community without a Greek Orthodox church

No dedicated Greek (Hellenic) Orthodox parish is documented as ever having existed within Schuylkill County. The county’s many Orthodox churches were Slavic — Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn — serving a different population in a different jurisdiction (see the Carpatho-Rusyns & Ukrainians profile). As a Greek observer of a comparable town explained, Greeks “possessed their own distinct liturgy” and so “required their own place of worship,” unlike Catholics who could merge into existing parishes — which is exactly why a county full of Slavic Orthodox churches still left its small Greek community without a parish of its own. Period naming even sets a trap here: a 1916 county biography credits a Pottsville builder with “the Greek church at Brockton” — but in the era’s usage a county “Greek church” was a Greek Catholic (Byzantine-rite, Slavic) congregation, and Brockton’s church today is St. Mary Byzantine Catholic — not a Hellenic parish.

The decisive primary-source proof is in Sam Palles’s own funeral: when he died in May 1928, the service was conducted by “Rev. Pansyiotes of Reading” — a Greek priest brought roughly forty miles — and he was buried at the (non-Orthodox) Charles Baber Cemetery in Pottsville. No Greek Orthodox clergy or parish served Pottsville in 1928. The community’s “home” parish was almost certainly Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Reading (first liturgy 1908, organized 1914; Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh), whose own history records the same candy-and-restaurant immigrant economy; the Annunciation parishes in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton were the other regional options.

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville — “Documented History” (1928 funeral notice); Sts. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church, Reading — parish history; Beers (1916) — the builder’s credit for “the Greek church at Brockton” (p. 537); Food Passages — “Speaking Frankly”.

Demographics and legacy

The Greek-born population was a small, overwhelmingly young-male community clustered in the restaurant and candy trades — never a labor colony. Modern self-reported Greek ancestry in Schuylkill County stands at roughly 635–991 people (the lower figure from the ACS table cited in the census spine, the higher from Statistical Atlas — the sources differ by vintage ), among the smaller European-ancestry groups, far below German, Irish, Polish, Italian, and Lithuanian.

The Greek legacy in the county is therefore not measured in church spires or fraternal halls but in family businesses — most enduringly The Coney Island of Pottsville, now more than a century old — while the community’s religious life was anchored, then as now, beyond the county line.

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville; Statistical Atlas — Ancestry in Schuylkill County; U.S. Census Bureau — Schuylkill County profile (ACS).

Open questions

  • The Pottsville AHEPA chapter’s name, number, and charter date (HSP Power District No. 4 records).
  • A named, ownership-detailed history of the Mahanoy City Greek restaurant(s) and any other county Greek businesses.
  • Confirmation of the regional “home” parish (Reading vs. Wilkes-Barre) resolved: Reading (Sts. Constantine & Helen) — confirmed by geography (the Pottsville–Reading corridor) and the 1928 “Rev. of Reading” funeral; Wilkes-Barre’s Annunciation served the Wyoming Valley. Any Greek-language school or society in the county remains open.
  • Fuller genealogies of the early Greek families (Palles, Sarantakos, Gorant, Parthemos, Thomakes).

Sources

Frequently asked

Why did Greeks come to Schuylkill County if not to mine coal?
They followed the classic Greek-American occupational ladder — shoeshine parlors and candy kitchens first, then lunchrooms, restaurants, and diners — feeding the coal towns rather than digging under them.
Was there ever a Greek Orthodox church in Schuylkill County?
No dedicated Greek (Hellenic) Orthodox parish is documented as ever having existed within the county. The county's Orthodox churches were Slavic. The community's 'home' parish was almost certainly Sts. Constantine and Helen in Reading — when Coney Island founder Sam Palles died in 1928, a Greek priest was brought from Reading for the funeral.
What is the best-documented Greek institution in the county?
The Coney Island of Pottsville, founded in 1917 by Greek immigrant Sarantos 'Sam' Palles and still serving today. Its primary-source-cited history preserves much of the county's early Greek record.

Towns: Pottsville, Mahanoy City, Tamaqua

Related peoples: Italians

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