Misakian/Bedrosian

Yeghiazar (Eliazar) Misakian and Apisag Bedrossian, the first Misakian family to settle in Whitinsville.

Yeghiazar, was born in the village of Parchanj, province of Kharpert, in the 1870’s to Khachadoor Misakian and Deris Odoian. His siblings included a brother, Harotyoon, and a sister Yeghsa. He was a cobbler like his father and grandfather, and at age 15, he married Shooshan Yavanian. In 1895, daughter Altoon was born and in 1907, son Misak was born.

Yeghiazar made his first trip to Whitinsville in 1888 and worked at the Whitin Machine Works. Over the next 2 decades he made several trips from Whitinsville to his native Parchanj, bought a butcher’s business and built a home for his family there. His brother Harootyoon joined him in Whitinsville for a short time around the turn of the century before bringing his wife and children to the United States and moving to Fresno, California. Some years after Yeghiazar’s return to Whitinsville in October 1908, the Ottoman Turkish massacres reached Parchanj, and Yeghiazar’s first family was torn apart. He would later learn that his wife Shooshan was killed, his daughter Altoon was taken by a Turk and forced to convert to Islam, and son Misak was orphaned.

Apesag Bedrossian was born in the village of Khultik, in the province of Paghech (Bitlis) in 1888. She had at least one sibling – a brother named Benyamin. The family was Armenian Protestant. Apisag married Hapet Ablahadian, and they had four children: Armenoohi, born in 1907; Nevart, born in 1910; Harootyoon, born in 1914, and Lucine, born in 1915 or 1916. Hapet Ablahadian was a victim of the massacres in Paghech, leaving Apisag without defense and with four young children. She joined the deportation marches, carrying baby Lucine in her arms. When Lucine was killed by a Turkish soldier, Apisag entrusted the care of her surviving children to Protestant missionaries to ensure their survival, continuing on the march alone. At some point on this journey, she conceived a son, and after Apisag had reached her brother Benyamin, a Protestant minister in Constantinople, Azad was born in 1917. Benyamin was in touch with cousins living on D Street in Whitinsville – the Sahakians, and through them arranged the marriage of the widow Apisag to the widower Yeghiazar.

With Benyamin’s help, Apisag and young Azad left for America with a passport from the first Armenian republic in late 1920 and arrived in America in early 1921, first staying with the Sahakian cousins on D Street. In the Sahakian home, on March 23, 1921, the Reverend Kapriel Bedrosian of Worcester, Massachusetts officiated at the marriage of Yegiazar and Apisag. Yegiazar embraced young Azad as his own, giving him the Misakian last name. Khachadoor (Archie) was born in March 1922, at the family home on Spring Street, and he was baptized in Worcester. Bedros (Peter) was born in 1927, joining brothers Khachadoor and Azad.

As they were building their family together, Yegiazar and Apisag longed to learn about the fates of their children from their first marriages. With Apisag’s brother Benyamin’s assistance in Constantinople, they learned that Yeghiazar’s children, Altoon and Misak, and Apisag’s surviving children, Armenoohi, Nevart and Harootyoon, were all alive. With her husband’s support, Apisag started the long process of collecting all the children and arranging for their immigration; she eventually became a United States citizen in 1932 to complete this process.
• Armenoohi, Apisag’s oldest daughter, arrived in 1924 and married Samson Bagdasarian of Manchester, NH, where they started their family.
• Misak, Yeghiazar’s oldest son, arrived by crossing the U.S. border from Canada in 1925.
• Nevart, Apisag’s middle child, arrived in 1928 from Havana, Cuba where she married Arsen Markarian of Manchester, NH, and started their family.
• Harootyoon, Apisag’s youngest, arrived from Havana, Cuba, in 1933 and married Varsenig Vetzigian in 1939 and started his family in Worcester.

In 1934, the Misakian family moved from Spring Street to Border Street in the New Village section of Whitinsville, and some time thereafter, Bessie the beagle joined them as a family pet. Azad, Archie and Peter played in the streets, swam in Meadow Pond, and went to Northbridge schools. Azad was captain of his football team, playing on an almost all-Armenian squad at Northbridge High; stories passed down noted that this team’s secret weapon was the ability to call all plays in Armenian without the opposing team knowing what was happening. Khachadoor and Bedros, who each had inherited their father’s tall genes, were basketball players. They all enjoyed summer vacations visiting their sisters’ families in Manchester, New Hampshire, but the homestead for the family remained Whitinsville. In the late 1930’s Misak moved from the Boston area to join his brothers in Whitinsville. Many family memories reach back to the humble home on Border Street, where Apisag’s delicious bread, fried doughnuts, kheyma, kufta and toorshi were treasured by her children and grandchildren.

Yeghiazar died in Whitinsville in January 1940. Apisag lived another 28 years and died in April 1968 after a stay at the Armenian nursing home in Jamaica Plains. They are buried together at Pine Grove Cemetery in Whitinsville.