Konstantinos Nikolaidis was born in 1873 in Niğde, in the province of Ikonio (Konya). Konstantinos worked for the local branch of the Ottoman Tobacco Company known as Régie. His wife Ourania was also from Niğde and the couple had four children, two sons and two daughters.
They arrived in Greece as refugees in 1923 or 1924, disembarking in Corfu where they stayed for a few months. Then they moved to Thessaloniki where they finally settled down. Konstantinos Nikolaidis became involved in local politics and was a candidate for the position of substitute mayor with the electoral alliance of Theofylaktos Theofylaktou in the municipal election of 1930.
Their daughter, Olympia, studied dentistry in Athens in the 1930s. She worked in Thessaloniki as a dentist and a dental technician and was one of the first women dentists in Northern Greece. It was Olympia who donated an array of family heirlooms to the Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia and Thrace: household items, photographs, documents, a notebook with her father’s memoirs, and paintings he had made.
She also donated a pair of woolen knit gloves made out of Turkish mohair and worn by her father when he worked for the Ottoman Tobacco Company.
Image: Nikos Tsiokas
