At an early age, his family moved to Smyrna where his father was employed as an accountant in a mercantile house.

His uncle consulted a local priest and wanted a full explanation of the biblical study his nephew would learn in America.

Deacon Loomis told Photius and Anastasius they could not travel to the Governor's house because they had to plow the fields over summer vacation.

The Photius took a ship called the Helene to Aegina, where he was instructed to wait for the outcome of the Battle of Navarino.

Gerard Halleck, wealthy philanthropist and editor of the Journal of Commerce, helped Photius in the beginning.

He attended revival meetings and met Samuel Hanson Cox, an abolitionist minister who integrated his congregation, allowing African-American members.

African American Presbyterian Reverend Samuel Cornish attended services and sat next to Arthur Tappan.

After a rigorous examination, Photius finished his studies as a minister and was placed at a church in Halifax, Vermont.

Commander Joseph Smith and all the officers of the Mediterranean Squadron and the entire crew of the Columbia were at the funeral.

[17] Photius was back in the United States in 1845 and he was assigned chaplain of the Washington Navy Yard.

Prominent Greek American Master Gunner George Marshall was also stationed at the Navy Yard.

John Quincy Adams and Joshua Reed Giddings were also close friends of Photius and abolitionists.

Samuel L. Southard, Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams and Joshua Reed Giddings were all part of the movement to abolish the practice but the bill was defeated many times during his five-year service at the Washington Navy Yard.

Regrettably, Fisk's close friend former President and abolitionist John Quincy Adams died on February 23, 1848, one day after Washington's birthday.

Assigned to the Pacific Squadron, the ship passed Cape Horn and by January 11, 1851, they were in Valparaíso, Chile.

The Commander did not allow the crew to do so because in 1849, he had docked there and over 1000 men of the Pacific Squadron had disappeared due to the California gold rush.

On this trip, he collected rare plants and seeds for the United States Botanic Garden in Washington.

Some of the genera he collected were Stanhopea, Cattleya, Epidendrum, Dendrobium, the vanilla plant, and several other named and unnamed species.

He was very close to William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Weld, Parker Pillsbury, and other anti-slavery agitators.

[30] Another Greek American abolitionist John Celivergos Zachos was in Boston around this period assembling his book for the free people of the South.

He contributed large sums of money to Berea College and the Holley School at Lottsburgh, Virginia.

He entertained many abolitionist friends, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Weld, James Redpath, and Parker Pillsbury.

In the fall of 1870, he paid to erect a monument for Henry Clarke Wright at Swan Point Cemetery, Providence, Rhode Island.

In one instance he donated one hundred dollars to the captain and crew of the White Rover for saving two people's lives.

He brought back artwork, pictures, relics of antiquity, marine shells, and mineral specimens.

In the spring of 1868, William Shreve Bailey was printing two weekly papers in Nashville, Tennessee in support of General Grant.

[39] A fellow Greek American named Michael Anagnos lived in Boston and was the head of the Perkins School for the Blind; Photius gave the institute a large donation.

In the fall of 1886, Chaplain Fisk erected another monument for his abolitionist friend William Shreve Bailey.

In the span of twenty-five years from the close of the American Civil War until his death, Photius contributed to dozens of philanthropic organizations and countless individuals.

He contributed to the tuitions of poor students attending Harvard, Yale, Amherst, and Dartmouth Colleges.