The Contributors
Exploration of my family’s mysterious Levantine origins
My name is Laura de Santo and I have only 2 handwritten booklets I have inherited from my mother’s family (Mercenier) that gives information on the early ancestry of this family. The notes start in the year of 1848 and are written by Isidore Mercenier and takes the story of the family back to his grandfather Antoine Mercenier who was born in 1729 (birth place not declared) who was the consular agent of France in the minor town of Enes in the area of Thrace where he also died in the year 1788. The note book records he had 2 marriages, the first of which was with Elizabeth Serra 1717 (from information from Marie Anne Marandet marriage registered at the Catholic Church of St Pietro & Paolo, Galata, Istanbul) and from this marriage there was one son- Jean Baptiste Mercenier.
The second marriage of Antoine Mercenier was with Rose Pacchini of Venice, 30 May 1773. From this marriage arose 5 children: Pierre, Antoine, Sophie, Catherine and Adelaide. It appears Pierre had no children, Antoine is my direct ancestor great-great grandfather, Sophie married Schapner with 4 children resulting, Catherine married Thomas Matcovich with 2 children resulting and Adelaide nothing stated.
Antoine (1788-1884) living in Constantinople married first Lucie Tyran (d. 1838) who was born in Constantinople of a French father and a ‘Cypriot’ mother. They had 12 children in total: Jean Mercenier was the eldest (1814-1868), Rose-Marie (1816-1854) who married a Sicilian Santo Rizzo and 4 children resulted from this union. The third child of Antoine was Ignace (1817-1837) dying of malaria, the fourth Pierre Eugene (1819-1852 in Sinope on the Black Sea). The fifth child was Marie-Claire (1822-?) of whom there is no further information, the next child is Casmir Francois (1823-1871) and then we have Constantine (1826-1837), next Fanny (1828-married cousin Jean Ignace Matcovitch, died 1868), next Jacques Eduard (1830-1831), next Felix Antoine Eduard (1832-1883), next Apollonie Hermance Sophie (1834-1835), Ignace Constantine (1837-1840).
Inherited Mercenier family booklets
Antoine was widowed when Lucie died quite young and he remarried Agnes Pisani (1842) daughter of Ignace Pisani. With this union there were 3 children: Charles (1842), Cesar Emmanuel (1845) and Issidore the diary keeper (1848). Issidore states in his diary he was born in Pera in Constantinople and stated that his father Antoine was ‘proprietaire Officier des S.S.J.J. et R.R. d’Autriche’ who was also decorated with numerous orders. Antoine appears to have been high up in the diplomatic representation of the Austrian nation which is strange as he had no Austrian blood. Issidore further states he did his education at College des Freres des Ecoles Chretien au rue des Imams de Pera, clearly a Catholic order school in Pera. He graduated from this school in 1869 and worked in a variety of Railway construction companies in Turkey following graduation. From January 1891 he worked for the Societe Explotation du Chemin de Fer Ottoman d’Anatolie in Haydarpasa. He then married Adelaide Brindesi in 1887 at the St Pierre Galata Church. From this union were 4 children: Louis (1888-1935), Raphael (my grandfather – 1891-1949), Agnes (1892-? She married a Turk, perhaps the first in that community), Antoine (1894-1908).
Raphael died when I was 4 so I have no recollections. My mother added notes to the Issidore notebook, so I do have some important dates recorded. Raphael married in 1918 Antonia Traiano from Italy (non-Levantine, arrived for tourism purposes initially). From this marriage were only 2 girls, Yolande (1919-1997) my mother and Ida who died young. I vaguely remember Raphael worked for the Ottoman Bank.
Yolande my mother was a good cook, like my father, very house proud. She loved the life of Istanbul and I have photos of her living the high-life that city offered. She married my father (Leonardo de Santo) in 1944 and they lived in Cihangir, Beyoglu like a lot of other Levantines.
Leonordo de Santo’s great-grandfather again Leonardo arrived in Constantinople from Palermo via Syra – where he was born in 1884 (died 1915, Constantinople grave in Feriköy Catholic Cemetery), so clearly the family stayed at least one generation in that Aegean Island. His profession in Constantinople was the management of the real estate connected to the British Embassy of the city and he became quite prosperous in the process1. In 1887 he married Maria Mathilda Filipucci (1853-1927) from Constantinople but with earlier origins from either Smyrna or one of the Aegean Islands. Leonordo de Santo had 14 children with Maria (birth between 1873 – 1896) and my grand-father Pietro-Paolo was the 11th born in Constantinople in 1890, died in the same city in 1949.
My maternal grand-father Raphael Mercenier and his wife Antonia Traiano
My paternal grand-father Pietro-Paolo de Santo and his family group - he is on the extreme left, my father and his sister on the front, the lady with the necklace is Pietro-Paolo’s wife Iphigenia Joannides in the 1930s.
My grand-father Pietro-Paolo de Santo was employed in the Ford motor company factory on the coast of the Bosphorus in the Tophane district of Istanbul. His company certification / reference letter dates his period of employment between 1929-1933 and records his role as an ‘enameller’. I do not know his earlier or later employment history. He married in 1918 in Constantinople a lady from the Istanbul Greek / Rum community Iphigenia Joannides (1897-1981) and apart from the names of her parents recorded in her birth certificate I know nothing about her. They had 2 children, my father Leonardo Giorgio (1919-2007) and Maria Mathilde (1921-1988). Maria never married.
My parents Leonardo Giorgio & Yolande Josephine Pasqualine Mercenier
My father Leonardo Giorgio went to the French School of the Saint Michel and he didn’t go to university but trained as an accountant and worked in a number of different industrial enterprises before setting his own accountancy firm in the 1960s. In 1944 he married Yolande Josephine Pasqualine Mercenier, an old resident family of Constantinople carrying that French origin name. It was obvious Yolande carried on the family culture of refinement and tradition. My parents had a good life in the hey-day of parties and receptions in the high-end hotels etc. of the city. As with some other Levantine families my mother was a member of the Italian Fascist Party of Istanbul taking part with great enthusiasm their different social functions. My mother had Italian relations through her mother and enjoyed with my father many holiday trips to Italy. In some of the trips I accompanied my parents as a young girl and my non-Levantine Italian maternal grand-mother would take me out on special outings. Like most Levantine children of the day in the summer-time, up to around aged 10, would be sent to the camp of the Catholic sisters (soeurs) of Ivrea, known as Galataria near Florya on the coast of the Sea of Marmara. Galataria tradition no longer survives but was a high-light of the year for the local Catholics with facilities including dormitories, with farm animals such as donkeys for rides. I never stayed overnight but others did and there were outings to the sea-side with the Sisters to the relatively nearby sea. As I grew older again continuing the Levantine summer tradition I would spend time as a family in a rented house in Yeşilköy which at the time still had a substantial Levantine community. These resident Yeşilköy Levantine family names I remember are Badetti, Ferri, Dapei, Campaner and the lady still living there Paola Grullero.
Extreme left my father and my mother with a hair band, the other people unknown.
My father was a modest man who had a limited social circle dominated by his work life providing accountancy services exclusively to the Greek and Armenian shopkeepers and traders in and around Karaköy and when the bulk of this community was expelled around 1964 he lost most of his clientele and friends.
My education was at the Soeurs d’Ivrea School at Galatasaray, Beyoğlu run at the completely by the Catholic sisters and I stayed at this school between the ages of 6 till 14, so graduating middle school and then went to the Italian lycee at nearby Tophane which was secular and both schools still stand but the sisters have long-since left the former. The quality of the general education and the inoculation of the general Italian culture within that instruction was excellent and I have maintained close relationships with some of my class-mates till today.
