Stoyan Christowe (also known as Stojan Hristoff) was an American author, journalist and noted political figure in the state of Vermont.

Born in what is now Makrochori, Greece, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, he is best remembered as a prolific author and Vermont legislator.

Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and was elected an honorary member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences (MANU).

Homes were still mostly illuminated using candles at this time in Ottoman Macedonia, and mule-pulled carriages were the primary mode of long-distance transportation.

[citation needed] At only 13-years-old, Stoyan Naumoff (he would later change his name to "Hristov", and in 1924 anglicized it to "Christowe") boarded the Oceanic in Naples, Italy, destined for the United States.

Ellis Island records indicate that he passed himself off as a 16-year-old Italian named Giovanni Chorbadji, believing that he would be admitted to the US easier if he were not a "Balkan peasant".

Once there, he bunked in squalid conditions with other Macedonian men, taking on a succession of menial jobs, including in a shoe factory, as a soda jerk and later in St. Louis Union Station.

The majority of Balkan immigrants to the United States made little effort to conform to the American way of life, living as closely as possible to how they did in their respective homelands.

In 1928, Christowe, then using the surname "Hristov" visited Greece, but intentionally avoided the village of his birth for the fear of being conscripted as a soldier in the Greek army.

His book, Heroes and Assassins, became required reading for those seeking to understand the post-World War Balkans, as well as the factional politics of Macedonia, the principal player in it being the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.

I belong spiritually as well as chronologically to the generations of immigrants who had to Americanize as well as acculturate, integrate, assimilate, coalesce, all at the same time.

Stoyan's fourth book, "This is My Country", was in fact found on president Franklin D. Roosevelt bedside table when he died, a present from his wife Eleanor.

[7]His passage from discombobulated newcomer, to hyphenated-American, to articulate chronicler of the migrant's experience, offers a primary source that changes over the thirty years of his writing.

Just think what would happen if the privilege to speak was taken away from me, you too would be affected for you could not listen to me.. let alone speak.…" In 1939, Christowe married Margaret Wooters, a writer from Philadelphia.

They had met seven years earlier while he was working on his first book, Heroes and Assassins, as a writer in residence at the Yaddo Writing Retreat.

He spent the next ten years writing articles, editorial pieces and book reviews for major American newspapers and magazines.

[citation needed] In 1985 he revisited Yugoslavia, where he was awarded with the title Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Sts.

[clarification needed] Christowe won a seat in the Vermont Legislature as a state representative, serving two consecutive terms in 1961 and 1963.

His advocacy for freedom, equality and education for all is best remembered in a speech he made on the occasion of a proposed amendment to change the Constitution of Vermont.

His numerous written works from his time as a correspondent in the Balkans contributed to the understanding of Southeastern European history in the early twentieth century.