America's first hostage crisis....a Bostonian in Macedonia

 

                                    The stained glass rotunda in the lobby of the museum.

Today we went to the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, a massive three story building on the Vardar River in the center of Skopje.  No photos were allowed inside the exhibits, and for this you should be grateful:  most of the museum was lined with one wax statue after another -- visages of patriotic revolutionaries who fought for an independent Macedonia for more than a century.  One exhibit showed a guy hanging from the ceiling with his distraught wife and children (in wax) crying as his feet dangled before them. 

The major event in this struggle for independence  was the Illinden uprising . (liilenden is the name of one of the major roads in Skopje). In 1903, a group of revolutionaries, mostly from the southeast corner of  Macedonia (next to Thessaloniki, Greece) and Bulgarians. They hatched a plan to fight off the much stronger Ottoman Turks. 

 Illinden refers to the prophet Elijah's Day, when Christ will return to earth. It is celebrated on July 20th (my daughter Katie's birthday). But the uprising didn't get off the ground until August and and ended in defeat in October. It stretched from Bulgaria and the Black Sea to Lake Ohrid in western Macedonia.  

For a glorious ten days, the Macedonians declared victory  when the rebels captured the town of Kruševo in the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day North Macedonia) and established a revolutionary government. The entity existed only for 10 days: from 3rd  to 13th of August, But it is still held up as the first independent Macedonian state.

But in the end, Macedonia was split up -The Ottomans gave the south  to Greece, The Serbs got the north and Bulgaria got a piece of the eastern Macedonia.  It was a devastating loss.

In order to fund this revolution, they hatched plans to rob banks and other schemes. But one of the most lucrative was a kidnapping of an American, from Boston. Ellen Maria Stone. Stone and her fellow pregnant missionary Katerina Stefanova-Cilka were taken hostage on August 21 (my son Rory's birthday) Six months later, after the birth of Katerina's baby, a ransom of 14,000 Turkish gold liras (most of it from Bostonians) was paid and the hostages were freed in February 1904.

Stone was born in Roxbury where she attended grammar school, then,graduated from Chelsea High School  She became a missionary for the Congregational church and in 1878 she took off for the Ottoman Empire to spread  the good word. She worked in Bulgaria for 20 years before moving to Thesalonika Greece, right across the border from the revolutionaries in Macedonia. 

After her kidnapping the Board of Foreign Missions appealed for aid and $72,500 was sent to pay her ransom... That is about 2.5 Million in today's dollars...

but it wasn't enough so they raised more. 

When she finally came home to Boston, she spent much of her  time trying  to secure from the US government the reimbursement to people whogeneroously paid  her ransom. The measure recommended by the State Department was passed in the Senate of the 60th Congress and also of the 61st and was unanimously recommended by the House of Representatives' Committee on Claims in the 61st and 62d Congresses.

What a gal!