Mooradian/Malkasian
This story begins with the arrival of Sarkis Malkasian in New York, from the village of Pazmashen, west of Kharpert (vilayet of Mamuret ul-Aziz), in 1900. The impetus for leaving was the constant threat of Turkish raids on the village, including their home. Sarkis was one of three young men in the village who were chosen to travel to Whitinsville, work, send money home, and then return home.
Born in 1879, Sarkis was a trained carpenter, and was married to Bahar (Sahagian), a weaver who made cloth on a loom inside their home. She sold the fabrics she made to supplement their income. Before leaving, Bahar sewed gold coins into the lining of Sarkis’s coat so he would have money when he arrived in the US. He also left behind two daughters, one of whom (name unknown) succumbed to smallpox, while the youngest, Zarouhi, (b. 1898) survived. She arrived in New York in 1907, with her mother, after a three week journey by ship, that began weeks before with a long trip on an ‘araba’ (horse drawn covered wagon) from Mezire, that crossed the Euphrates River and then took them to the port of Samsun, on the Black Sea. They traveled with Miriam (Mooradian) Israelian and her daughter Yeghsapet (Lizzie), and Varter Bedigian and her mother. Miriam’s husband, Hovaness, was already here, living in Uxbridge.
Sarkis began working at the Whitin Machine Works, crafting wooden molds, but sometime before 1907, he decided to fill an important need in this large factory town. Very few homes had hot running water and bathing was infrequent, yet the factory workers were quite dirty after a day of work, so they badly needed a way to stay clean. His solution was to build, entirely by hand, a traditional Turkish bathhouse (a hamam), at 90 East St. He also constructed a house next door, at 88 East St., where he and his family would live. The family lived on proceeds from the hamam until 1917, when Bahar suddenly died after an illness, at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. Bahar was responsible for washing the towels used in the hamam, and when she died, Sarkis was at a loss. He remarried a widow from Watertown, Satenig Hourigian, who had two children, Vanna and Kirkor. Unfortunately, his new wife (originally from Kayseri and didn’t speak Armenian, only Turkish), refused to wash the bath towels or to be involved with cleaning the hamam. Over time, that and indoor plumbing ended the hamam, which charged 10 cents a bath, if you brought your own towels; 15 cents if you used the hamam’s towels. Sarkis then returned to work at the Whitin Machine Works until his death in 1948, but in the 1920s, was able to send Satenig’s son for a degree in chemical engineering at M.I.T. Kirkor then moved to Detroit, where he invented a glue that was bought and used by every automobile manufacturer for decades.
In 1917, after the death of her mother, Zarouhi married Eli (Yeghia/Yeghiazar) Mooradian (Muradian). Eli was born in Pazmashen in (1888, 91 or 92?) the son of Hovsep and Zemrut. He, along with his brother Tateos (Tato), survived the 1894/95 Hamidian massacres as orphans. (Miriam (Mooradian) Israelian was their paternal aunt, living in Uxbridge). He eventually attended Euphrates College, where he studied and learned English from Protestant missionary teachers. He left Pazmashen and arrived in Whitinsville in 1906. We don’t know his travel route or how he acquired the money for a ticket, but we know that his brother Tateos somehow made his way to Batumi, for the journey to the US.
Eli worked in the foundry at the Whitin Machine Works, alongside many other immigrant Armenian men. He enlisted with the US Army, and became a translator for them, as he spoke English, Armenian and Turkish. As a result, he was granted US citizenship. (Zarouhi, for reasons we don’t know, did not become a naturalized US citizen until 1957). He was a staunch member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the Dashnagtsutiun). In 1920, he was a delegate at the A.R.F. World Congress in Boston, which was also attended by the revolutionaries Armen Garo, Simon Vratzian and Hovaness Kachaznuni (he was prime minister of the first republic of Armenia). This was also the meeting where Operation Nemesis and the plan to assassinate Talaat Pasha was hatched. For many years, Eli was deeply involved in bringing stateless Armenians who survived the Genocide, into the US from Canada in the late 1920s/early 1930s. This eventually attracted the attention of the Federal authorities, and ultimately required Zarouhi to travel to Canada to seek out key paperwork that would help to avoid his being charged with a federal crime, and exonerate him.
He and Zarouhi had three children: Warren (baptized as Meroujan. b. 1920); Anjel (Ardroushan, b. 1921) and Arthur (Ashod, b. 1925). Warren relocated to Hartford, CT, Artie to Worcester/West Boylston, and Anjel remained in Whitinsville. During WWII, Warren was in the US Navy (intelligence division) and Artie was with the USO, stationed in Germany.
Eli was a founding member of the group that lobbied to establish the Armenian church of Whitinsville, Soorp Astvadzadzin, which is named after the church in Pazmashen, and because he was well versed in English, helped to secure the land after a series of meetings with E. Kent Swift, a key executive of the Whitin Machine Works. For several years, Eli was the church committee’s Armenian recording secretary. His grandson, James, was the first baby to be baptized in the new church.
The Depression brought deprivation and loss of steady work. Zarouhi then cut her hair (which was a serious cultural taboo), and found a job sorting rags at a rag factory in Manchaug. Both actions caused a temporary ‘shunning’ by the other Armenian women, but this allowed them to keep their house on Church St., where she lived until she died in 1991.
Zarouhi’s uncle, Abdal Kolej Boghosian, was living in Boston, and wrote one of the definitive books on village life in Pazmashen, which was published by Baikar in 1930, entitled ‘Pazmashentsi Untartzag Badmootiunuh’. Abdal’s daughter married the artist Giragos der Garabedian, who maintained a studio on Newbury St. in Boston for many years, and is known for his paintings of New England scenes. Giragos also decorated the walls of their house on Church St. with colorful Roman style plaster frescoes.
We have Bahar and Zarouhi’s original Ottoman passport document, as well as the original deeds to three properties in Pazmashen.
