Garafilia Mohalbi(y) (Γαρυφαλλιά Μιχάλμπεη) (1817-1830) was born to a prominent family on the island of Psara (Ψαρά). Her parents and siblings were killed in the 1824 Psara massacre by the Turks. There are many stories about how she survived (i.e. her mother pushed her in a row boat away from the island), but in 1824 she found herself working as a maid of a Turkish family in Smyrna.

At a Smyrna bazaar in 1827, she met American merchant/consul Joseph Langdon and begged him to rescue her. He “ransomed” her and sent her to his Boston family to be educated. Garafilia attended the Ursuline Convent School in Charlestown, but died from tuberculosis March 17, 1830, at age 13. Her story along with her beauty, intelligence and sweet disposition touched America.

New York artist Anne Hall painted Garafilia’s portrait as the “Greek Girl,” Boston composer Carl Gartner wrote the Garafilia Mazurka and popular Connecticut author/poet Lydia Sigourney wrote a poem dedicated to the “Sweet bird of Ipsara.” America’s first woman magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, dedicated to Garafilia a chapter in her 1853 book, Woman’s Record, Sketches of All Distinguished Women and Boston’s children’s magazine The Youth’s Keepsake used Garafilia as the cover story of its Christmas 1830 issue. Obituaries were written in several newspapers around the country and some families chose to give her name to their newborn daughters.

Garafilia was also the likely inspiration for the famous 1844 statue “The Greek Slave,” by Hiram Powers, one of the best-known American sculptors of the 19th century. Powers wrote “The Slave has been taken from one of the Greek Islands by the Turks, in the time of the Greek revolution, the history of which is familiar to all. Her father and mother, and perhaps all her kindred, have been destroyed by her foes, and she alone preserved as a treasure too valuable to be thrown away….” (“The Greek Slave,” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture, University of Virginia, 1998-2012, retrieved 4/5/2017). The statue became a powerful symbol in America’s abolitionist movement and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a sonnet about it.

Langdon’s “rescue” of Garafilia is described by one of his descendants, Louise Langdon van Agt, in her manuscript “The Humbler Bostonians,” held in the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1854 book “The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” (Boston: Jewett, 1854, p. 303) alludes to Garafilia’s case by writing “I was in Smyrna when our American consul ransomed a beautiful Greek girl in the slave-market. I saw her come aboard the brig ‘Suffolk,’ when she came on board to be sent to America for her education.”

1827 passenger list of the Brig Suffolk bound from Smyrna to Boston, in which Garafilia is listed as an Ipsariot (a citizen of Psara).

Garafilia’s death certificate (below) says she died from consumption March 17, 1830 and was buried at St. Paul’s Church cemetery March 19 in lot 24.

This Garafilia portrait adorned the Christmas 1830 issue of Boston’s The Youth’s Keepsake magazine, which also contained the obituary below.

The "cemetery" in the death certificate referred to the crypt in the basement of St. Paul’s Church (the Episcopal Cathedral on Tremont Street in Boston), where she was buried in Tomb #24. The cathedral’s records show that to save space Garafilia’s remains were moved a few months after her burial from Tomb No. 24 to Tomb No. 19, which also included the remains of five-year-old Catherine H. Prescott, who had died a few months before  Garafilia. In 1898, St. Paul’s parish asked families with remains of loved ones in its crypt to remove them because the church needed the space.

According to Prescott family wishes, the remains of Garafilia and Catherine were sent to historic Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., where most of the Prescott graves can be found today.  Left, top: Garafilia and Catherine’s grave (center) at Mt. Auburn. Left, bottom, the Mt. Auburn Cemetery diagram, with No. 3 showing to be the grave of Catherine and Garafilia. On the bottom left of this map is the reference that these remains were moved from St. Paul’s--Boston.

The dramatic survival story of a little Psara girl, Γαρυφαλλιά (Garafilia), who ended up in Boston, captured the imagination of 19th century America, inspired artists and generated increased support for Greek independence, especially after the appearance of Powers’ The Greek Slave statue (right). In 2014 we finally discovered her burial site!

First American female magazine editor Sarah Hale, in her 1853 book “Woman’s Record, Sketches of all Distinguished Women,” included a section on Garafilia.

On the right is the letter of the archivist of Boston’s St. Paul Episcopal Cathedral confirming that Garafilia’s crypt/tomb 19 was “associated” with young Catherine H. Prescott. Their  remains were combined in crypt 19 before they were moved to Mt. Auburn in 1898.

Above: Sexton Skinner’s record of burials in St. Paul’s cemetery. Right: Garafilia’s entry is the last name on the page, with the identification “greek girl.” (Courtesy of  Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts Library and Archives.)

The name of Garafilia’s family (Μιχάλβεη or Μιχάλμπεη) is displayed in the Monument of the Fallen in Psara’s central square (left.)

In the closeup below, the name is second from the top. (Photos courtesy of Constantine Marinos)

Although the “rescue” of Garafilia is confirmed by several sources, including those mentioned above, there is evidence that her two sisters were also ransomed by Langdon. At least two articles in American newspapers, the New-York Spectator of May 8, 1827 (left) and the Louisiana Advertiser of June 7, 1827, featured the same story welcoming the “Greek Youth” and congratulating her for being saved and sent to Boston to be educated. The story also mentions the two sisters, who were taken by two Europeans, “who have humanely made provision for their education.”

By L. H. Sigourney

Music score of Carl Gartner’s Garafilia Mazurka in the Library of Congress(1855)