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New immigration (1880s–1920s)

The Greeks of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania

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 — 0 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. Where the Slavs and Welsh are a story of labor underground, the Greeks (like the Jews) are a Main Street story — and a remarkably durable one. ★

The community was once thought so faint as to be a “negative” in the county record. As established earlier, that was wrong: newspaper and census evidence overturned it. Greek-owned restaurants are documented in Pottsville and Mahanoy City from the 1930s; the Greek-American fraternal order AHEPA appears in county papers 378 times from the late 1920s onward, with a front-page “AHEPA Banquet” story in the Pottsville Republican of July 1, 1947; and the 1920 census fixes a real, if small, Greek-born population. ✔ This profile documents what that community was — and its richest, most fully-sourced institution turns out to be a single Pottsville restaurant founded by a Greek immigrant in 1917.

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 cliché of the era — “When Greek meets Greek, they start a restaurant” — was a demographic fact. ★

This exact ladder is documented in Pottsville, and the Coney Island’s publicly documented history puts names to it. Sarantos “Sam” Palles — born Σαράντος Παναγιώτου Παντελεάκης (Sarantos Panteleakis) in the Laconian village of Levetsova (today Krokees) in 1899/1900 — reached Ellis Island on March 7, 1916 at sixteen, sailing to his uncle, Anastasios “Tom” Sarantakos, in Pennsylvania. He shined shoes in his uncle’s shop, then moved into the restaurant trade: he appears in Boyd’s Directory of Pottsville (1917) as “Palles Sam, bootblack,” and within a year had opened a hot-dog lunchroom. The 1920 census records him born in Greece, immigrated 1916, occupation “Restauranter,” industry “Lunch Room.” The bootblack-to-restaurateur arc, the uncle’s sponsorship and shoeshine shop, the candy/fruit feeder trades, the youth, the recent arrival — every element of the national pattern is present in one Pottsville family. ★

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville — “Documented History” (citing Boyd’s Directory, the Pottsville Republican Nov. 8, 1918, and the 1920 U.S. Census); 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 community’s anchor institution

The best-documented Greek institution in Schuylkill County is The Coney Island of Pottsville, founded in 1917 by Sarantos “Sam” Palles — a young immigrant from Levetsova (Krokees), Laconia — and still family-owned and operating four generations on. Its publicly posted, primary-source-cited corporate history makes it in effect a micro-archive of the county’s entire Greek experience. ★

The documented arc:

  • 1917–1918: Sam Palles opens “the famous Coney Island Hot Weiners” at 215 N. Centre Street (grand opening announced in the Pottsville Republican, November 8, 1918), alongside his uncle Anastasios “Tom” Sarantakos (the family ran both a shoeshine stand and the restaurant, trading as the “Pottsville Pure Food Store”). ★
  • 1928: Sam Palles dies in Pottsville on May 6, 1928, of fulminating gangrenous appendicitis with peritonitis, following an operation two days earlier — still in his twenties (the death certificate records his age as 27). His widow, Antonia (Parthemos) Palles, carries 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 generations: the business passed down through Sam’s son Peter Sarantos Palles and beyond, remaining in the Palles family into the present day at 2290 W. Market Street, Pottsville. ★

The Coney Island is also documentary proof of a wider local 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 and business-seeding 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. ★

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,” and in its early years it worked alongside the NAACP and B’nai B’rith against the Klan. 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 in the county’s newspapers from the late 1920s through the 1950s (378 matches), 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/number was 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.

The decisive primary-source proof is in the Coney Island founder’s own funeral: when Sam Palles died in Pottsville 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; Food Passages — “Speaking Frankly”.

People

  • Sarantos “Sam” Palles — born Σαράντος Παναγιώτου Παντελεάκης in Levetsova (Krokees), Laconia, 1899/1900; emigrated 1916 at sixteen to his uncle in Pottsville; founder of the Coney Island; died May 6, 1928. His Pennsylvania death certificate lists his race as “Greek” and his trade as “Restauranteur.” ★
  • Antonia (Parthemos) Palles — also of Levetsova, Sam’s wife, who carried the business on after his death. ★
  • Anastasios “Tom” Sarantakos (c. 1888–1972) — Sam’s uncle, himself born in Levetsova; he sponsored sixteen-year-old Sam’s 1916 voyage, employed him, and went into business with him (he was the informant on Sam’s death certificate). ★
  • The Palles family carried the restaurant through Sam’s son Peter Sarantos Palles and the generations after. ★
  • John Catsampas, Anthony Laganis, J. Tsatsanifos — Pottsville AHEPA members of record. ★
  • Pallbearers and family at the 1928 funeral preserve more of the early community’s surnames — Gorant, Parthemos, Thomakes, Sterling. ★

Sources: The Coney Island of Pottsville — “Documented History”.

Demographics and legacy

The Greek-born county population — 0, then 46, then 158 across 1900–1920 — was a small, overwhelmingly young-male, restaurant-and-candy-clustered community, never a labor colony. Modern self-reported Greek ancestry in Schuylkill County stands at roughly 635–991 people (depending on the ACS vintage), among the smaller European-ancestry groups, far below German, Irish, Polish, Italian, and Lithuanian. ★ ⚑ (The ~635 figure is from the ACS table cited in the census spine; Statistical Atlas reports ~991 — the figures differ by source vintage.)

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, four generations and more than a century old, the textbook case of Greek-American small-business persistence and assimilation. The community’s religious and cultural life, then as now, was anchored at the Greek Orthodox parish in Reading rather than at any institution within the county.

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 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. Like the Jews, the Greeks are a Main Street story, not a labor-underground one.
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 family-owned four generations on. Its primary-source-cited history makes it in effect a micro-archive of the county's entire Greek experience.

Towns: Pottsville, Mahanoy City, Tamaqua

Related peoples: Italians

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