The following family trees were dictated to me by my mother in the 1970s-to-1980s-time frame. At that time, she was in her late seventies and early eighties. She could recount all of the family relatives on both sides of her family going back several generations. Except for a few exceptions, most of the family trees are current to that time period. Only a few have been updated to the 21st century. Let me first say that the names that are listed are transliterations of the Slavic names that my mother told me. They may not be spelled the same way that they are currently spelled in whatever country their offspring may reside. You must remember that there are different languages, different alphabets, and different reasons why names may change. As an example, my grandmother’s sister, Neta Glavcheva, married Kuzo Pizharkoff. Their offspring ended up in Australia and are known as Pizarcoff. This is pretty close to the way that I spelled it, but not quite. The same is true of many others.
Vasil Popoff
Risto Popoff
Risto (or Christo) is Vasil Popoff’s brother. He was a priest who lived and died in Provadia, Bulgaria. Gligor, their father, is the one who was kidnapped. To prove that they had him and that they were serious, the kidnappers cut off his ear and sent it his relatives. Unfortunately, with medicine not that good, he soon got infected and died. At that time, the Popoff family was wealthy by village standards, but did not have ready cash. By the time that the cash was obtained, it was too late.
Petar Popoff
This is the family tree of Petar Popoff. His grandson, Dineto Popoff was my father’s first cousin. His wife, Hazel Kish, was Hungarian. Dineto and Elo Popoff owned a restaurant in East Toledo. It was open 24 hours per day, six days a week (with Tuesdays off).
Dine Glavcheff
This is the family tree of the Glavcheff family. Some of the information was obtained from listening to the recorded autobiography of Andon Glavcheff on the village site (Chereshnitsa.org/in their own words). I have a hard time understanding why the family name was Glavcheff instead of the last name of the husband of Maria Glavcheva. Maria Glavcheva was the daughter of Dineto Glavcheff. Her husband was a Greek fellow who left the family in 1889 shortly after Andon was born. His name is not known to me. Beside Andon and Vasilka, there were two other daughters – Neta and Mitra. Perhaps it was because when their father left the family, the four offspring did not want to carry on his name, so instead they took on the last name of their grandfather, Dine. If anyone has a better theory, please let me know. Vasilka Popova was born in 1882. I do not know when Neta and Mitra were born.
Neta’s grandson, Tometo, the son of Gileto (Greek Argir) Pizharkoff and Prosha Zurlova, was killed in 1948 as a partisan in the Greek civil war. As a tribute to his killed son, Gileto adopted his own grandson from his daughter Tana Pizharkova and Paul Glufchev and named him Tome Pizharkoff. This was quite an honor.
Bob and Verka Tarpchinoff, the offspring of Vasil and Vasilka Turpchinoff are listed in the book “Night time comes to a village” as residing in Seattle, Washington. Vasil Turpchinoff is the son of Mitra Turpchinoff, one of the sisters of Vasilka Popova. Vasil and Vasilka Turpchinoff and Robert and Verka were living in Front Street in Toledo, Ohio when I was in Toledo.
Timyane Boshkoff
This family tree traces the offspring of Timyane Boshkoff & Nitsa Boshkova. They are the grandparents of my mother, Dota Boshkova. Timyane and Nitsa had two sons and two daughters. My mother was descended from one of the sons, Dimitri and his wife Mitra Engelova. The offspring of my aunt Dina are located in Toledo, Ohio. Her offspring are buried in Greece and Toledo. The offspring of my uncle Koleto are located in Bulgaria and Australia. My uncle is buried in Poland. His offspring are buried in Bulgaria and Australia. My brother, Pando, just died last year and is buried in Toledo, Ohio. And of course the grandkids and great grandkids of all of them are alive and living in various countries. This is what may be called an international family.
Vaneto Engeloff
This is the family tree of the descendants of Vaneto Engeloff and Dafinka Engelova, the great grandparents of my mother, Theodota Pappas. You will notice some familiar names of people residing in Fort Wayne that are distantly related paternally.
To really understand why people have the last names that they do, a person should know the language, and probably the history, of those people. We all realize that in English, a Smith is someone who had a distant relative that worked with metals, and a Baker is someone that worked in the bakery business. Similarly, in Macedonian, a Popoff is someone that had a priest as a distant relative (pope).
We may extend that to a facial or bodily feature or some quirk in the personality. Probably a Shkemboff had a distant relative that had a big stomach (shkemba), or a Rogoff had a big pimple on the forehead (horn). In addition, the Greek government changed all the names in 1936 to the Hellenic format. For example, a Popoff was renamed Pappas. Also, many immigrants came to the USA via Ellis Island where they may have been asked what their names were. I have known of individuals that gave the authorities an Anglicized names so that they may be assimilated faster into the American society.