(Editor’s Note: Information for the following story is compiled from recollections passed along by the Christo cousins at many family reunions.)

Immigrants faced many challenges in coming to the United States in the early 1900s. Most were poor, and most knew only their native language.

Still they came with a hope to create better lives for themselves in America.

One such family was the Christo family of Kassendra, Greece. They were among the few Greek families to migrate to the Boone County area in Nebraska early in the 20th century.

In 1905, Alex Christo (born May 8, 1883 in Kassendra) married Anna Marie Larson Christo (born Dec. 31, 1885 in Kassendra). A traditional three-day celebration marked their wedding.

Anna Marie had grown up in a poor family but in a beautiful area, Salonika, Greece, near the Aegian Sea. At a young age, she was sent to serve a wealthy German family as a babysitter.

She recalled that, when she was a child, her mother would bake bread every day outside in a brick oven. Her father supplemented their food supply by taking eggs to a village to trade for other foods.

The Christos had met at a restaurant where Alex was a waiter, and were married a short time later.

Shortly after the wedding, Alex and his brother initiated the family’s move to America. They were stowaways on a ship bound for the USA.

They arrived at Ellis Island, New York, on Sept. 16, 1905, and were somehow separated at that time. They never saw each other again, according to family history.

Alex Christo rode a train to Newman Grove, Nebraska. He had 25 cents when he arrived, but received help from the local banker, H. R. Gerhart, which resulted in a lifetime friendship.

Alex worked on the railroad, in an elevator, delivered milk, and later was able to buy a small farm in the South Branch area. He gained his U.S. citizenship in 1910, and was always proud of that.

Two years after Alex arrived in the U.S.A., he was finally able to meet his wife, Anna Marie, in Chicago with their two-year-old daughter, Helen. The trip to America had taken four weeks to complete.

The Christos returned to Newman Grove, where they lived in a one-room house. Their furniture consisted of cardboard boxes. When their fortunes improved, they were able to move to a farm in the South Branch area, but they still had very limited conveniences. Anna Marie saved rain water to wash her long hair, which she always wore in a bun.

Alex and Anna Marie raised 10 children, including six boys George, Tom, Pete, Jim, John and Max, and four daughters -- Helen, Irene, Anna and Rosie.

Like her own mother, Anna Marie made bread almost every day. Her grandchildren recall the bread loaves lined up end-to-end on their living room table and the wonderful smells of her cooking.

Alex passed away in 1953 at age 70. His family recalled that he loved driving his Model T and often had a cigar in his mouth. He was short and had to sit on the middle seat to see out of the windshield, but was always able to crank up the Model T for the trip across rough country roads.

Although short in stature, he was a hard worker and passed this asset on to his children, often barking orders about “doing things right.”

Always known to her family as a great cook, Anna Marie moved to Albion in 1953 after Alex’s death, and lived here for 19 years until her death in 1972 at age 87. Family members said she spoke broken English, but “she could get her point across to you if she thought you were not being a good person.”

Her telephone was color coded for the numbers of each of her children, and she could always remember the time when the Lawrence Welk Show came on TV.

Christmas was a magical time at Anna Marie’s house when her large family visited. Adults were downstairs and grandchildren were upstairs, where the smaller ones were separated from the older ones. There was plenty of noise and “rough-housing” as her family recalled.

She would sometimes walk into town, always wearing an apron with her money in one of the apron pockets. Many of her grandchildren would walk to her house after school. She insisted they have a cookie and tell her all the news of their day while sitting with her on the front porch.