John Jeannopoulos

The Jeannopoulos record carries a name without a person attached to it: a John Jeannopoulos, age 31, arriving New York on the SS Saturnia in 1930. Back-computing from the recorded age, that John would have been born in 1899 — a generation older than the Soma siblings we have on record. He surfaces in one manifest. He vanishes from every other record.

The “older John, born 1899” entry that has hovered over the Jeannopoulos generation since the first family-research pass is now best read as a likely document-issue rather than a separate person.

The 1930 SS Saturnia record

The only documentary trace for this profile is the 1930 SS Saturnia arrival manifest, which records a passenger:

Name: John Jeannopoulos · Sex: Male · Age: 31 · Birth Year (Estimated): 1899 · Event: Immigration · Date: 1930 · Port: New York, NY · Ship: SS Saturnia

The “1899” is FamilySearch’s index back-computation from the recorded age of 31. It is not an independent primary-source birth-year statement.

Why the 1930 entry is most likely John Lazare with a falsified age

The full case is developed on John Lazare’s own page, but in summary:

1. The Jeannopoulos family had a documented age-manipulation pattern. Eftyhia altered John Lazare’s birth year by two years on US records to prevent military conscription; John and Takis forged passports during the 1924-25 runaway to Greece; ages on Jeannopoulos manifests have repeatedly diverged from priest-certified birth dates. A 31-year-old “John Jeannopoulos” arriving in 1930 — when John Lazare’s true age was ~19-21 — is consistent with another iteration of the same pattern, likely to traverse adult-traveler immigration thresholds without parental signature.

2. Peter’s 2026 enumeration of Lazaros + Eftyhia’s children listed only four brothers — Takis (Panagiotis), John, Achilles, Kostas (Constantine). No fifth brother. Peter knew his uncles personally and would have known of any “older John” who lived in the US through Peter’s birth in 1943.

3. The 1930 timing fits John Lazare’s biography. John Lazare’s whereabouts between the 1924-25 runaway return and his 1931 University of Paris enrollment (per the 1937 sworn affidavit) are undocumented. A 1930 inbound voyage to New York — a “return home before starting Paris medical school next year” — fits.

4. No other trace. Five-plus subsequent searches across census, naturalization, marriage, military, and death records have surfaced nothing else under a “John Jeannopoulos born 1899” profile. An entire American life lived through the 1930s-1950s would not leave such a clean blank if it had been an actual separate person.

What we keep, what we revise

• Keep this slug as a placeholder so the SS Saturnia document doesn’t become orphaned.
• Revise the interpretation from “possible older brother” to “likely document-issue / falsified-age return voyage of John Lazare.”
• Mark uncertain_existence: true to reflect that no separate person may exist behind this entry at all.
• Cross-reference to John Lazare’s page where the resolution is laid out in detail.

If a primary-source record ever surfaces for a separate Jeannopoulos man born 1899 — Soma δημοτολόγιο, an Ottoman birth register, a US census or naturalization — this page will be revised accordingly. Until then, the working resolution is that the two Johns in the family record are most plausibly one John with two different ages on two different documents.