![]() ![]() Malbis had developed and maintained close financial connections with Chicago. ![]() By the end of the 1920s, many members of the Greek community, having been in Mobile for several years, had achieved a level of modest prosperity, though none commanded the resources that Malbis and his Baldwin County community did. As a result, the influx of Greeks slowed to a trickle. In 19, the United States Congress passed laws limiting immigration from southern Europe, including Greece. Jason Malbis gave the church money to hire a priest and make the building look as an orthodox church should on the inside, with icons, an altar screen and many other features, which were common in churches in the old country. The church was first located in the old First Christian Church on Government and Dearborn streets.īy the mid-1920s, one member of the organization stood out. This year marks the centennial of its founding, and thus of the Church of the Annunciation, which has been located on Ann Street since 1957. With his help they organized a community to be called the Greek Orthodox Brotherhood of the Annunciation. On January 26, 1912, some three dozen Greeks met in a store on Government Street owned by Constantine Demetriou to hear Archimandrite Joachim Georgiou, the Orthodox priest in Pensacola. There was little time for recreation before World War I for these immigrants who numbered less than 200 when that war broke out. With luck and dedication, Mobile’s Greeks paid passage for people from their home villages, or amassed enough resources to pay for a sister’s dowry. Poverty and oppression there were as universal as the stunning landscape and the “wine dark sea” Homer had described two and a half millennia earlier. They just worked hard, all day every day and saved whatever money they made to send home to help their families in villages and on the islands or in Asia Minor where they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire. They sold fish and produce door to door, or were street vendors downtown selling candy and nuts. They found whatever work they could, mostly in the food industry. Most arrived after living in New York or Chicago. Greek men came into this area in the last decades of the 19th century. ![]() Greeks were not as numerous as other European immigrants in Mobile and Baldwin counties, nor were they among the first. Some four decades later, we still have not forgotten that evening. Little did we know that we were getting an introduction to a distinct culture within Mobile and eating in one of the Greek restaurants that defined great eating here. The food was very good and everyone friendly. Looking for a place to dine that evening, we found Gulas Restaurant nearby. Our first night we stayed in a small motel on U.S. When my wife and I moved to Mobile, in August 1970, we were living on a shoestring, knew no one, and we found the climate a challenge. ![]()
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January 2023
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