Harabedian/Boghosian
Married two months before in Beirut, Turkey, Garabed Harabedian (Hairabedian) from Bursa and his new bride Zarouhi Boghosian accompanied by her mother Arshaluys Harpootian Boghosian from Keghi, Ezerum, debark at Providence, Rhode Island. Another daughter Voskinaz Amerigian Garabedian is waiting at the Providence dock having arrived 10 months before with a young son Varkis, to marry a second husband Avedis Garabedian a local baker in Worcester, a widower.
They have left behind the horrors of war and displacement, the loss of family, friends, property and personal possessions and a land and region of stalking death, hatred, and Genocide. The three women with their sister-in-law, cousins, friends and women from Keghi have crossed the mountains of Armenia and the Syrian desert on foot and what they experienced and witnessed along the way is rarely spoken about. Husband and father Hovsep and 5 of 6 sons were killed by Kurds and Turks. Voskinaz also know as Vartouhi enters service in a Muslim home and we don't know if it was Turkish or Arab. After sometime her mother and sister find her and with an Armenian priest remove her from the house. She did not want to leave as there was security there, but she joins them, later leaving for America before them.
Garabed was in the Turkish Army in 1916 and had quickly been based to Mosul, in today’s Iraq, in the World War, but deserts after seeing Armenians in cattle cars being shipped to their deaths in the desert, and he eventually joins the French forces. He said he "found" Zarouhi, her mother and the others in Aintab and receives permission from the French resettlement program and the American government to marry and leave the region for America by way of France.
After a brief stay in Marseilles, the new arrivals have two American addresses in their possession, 62 Eastern Avenue, Worcester, Massachusetts and 195 ½ Church Street, Whitinsville, MA. 62 Eastern Avenue is a commonly used address by Armenian immigrants headed to Worcester and is located across the street from the Church of Our Savior on Laurel Hill, the first Armenian church in America and near Avedis Garabedian’s bakery. We assume that the family stay in Worcester with the Garabedians before settling in Whitinsville. Garabed was a talented cook and had been part owner of a restaurant with a Greek friend in Smyrna, Turkey before he was forced into the Turkish army. He became a cook later for his French captain and family in Aintab and quickly got a job cooking for a group of Armenian bachelor laborers on Eastern Avenue in Worcester.
Like so many immigrants that didn’t stay in Worcester, Garabed found work at the Whitin Machine Works factory in the town of Northbridge, Village of Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and stayed employed there for 30 years.
The couple with mother Arshaluys lived at first at 195 ½ Church St., and only recently it has been discovered the apartment was occupied by a 70 year old man listed in the census as a relative, named Harry Harabedian. This man is unknown to us. The 1930 U.S. Census shows the family living at 87 East Street and in 1940 the census shows an eventual move is made to Whitin Machine Works factory housing at 40 D Street in the New Village section of Whitinsville. Most of the occupants of this area are Armenian with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Life indeed is quite village like and must have been an adjustment for both Garabed and Zarouhi, he having lived in the cosmopolitan city of Bursa where his family owned a metal fabrication business and also created embroidery for Turkish clothing. Later, Smyrna, at that time before it was burned to the ground in 1922,by Turkish forces, the richest and most flamboyant city of the Near East. Garabed and Zarouhi also having spent time in Aintab, Homs, Syria, Jerusalem and Beirut, all part of the Ottoman Empire, and even Marseilles. Zarouhi’s father owned a bar and inn located in the center of Keghi Kasaba city proper where they lived and were prosperous.
Garabed and Zarouhi became popular in Whitinsville, and are mentioned in Mary Ovian’s book Seeds in the Wind, because they often performed a dance imitating a rooster and hen much to the delight of friends and neighbors, and in Rose Shenian Alaverdian’s writings on Life in Whitinsville, noting an expedition by a group of women to pick blueberries in a nearby swamp with one of them getting her feet stuck in the mud and having to be pulled out by the rest! The woman was Zarouhi and after the rescue everyone laughed hilariously all the way back to New Village!
Kirkor, their son George, was born in 1923, and a daughter Shushanik, Susie, was born in 1925. They attended the West End School and later Northbridge High School. They were both popular and had many friends. Life on D Street, New Village, was family oriented and they did everything together and with other families who had come from all over the Ottoman Turkey and the Armenian regions. Sue’s early memories include the death of her grandmother Arshaluys in 1932, when she was taken out of the house for a while upon her grandmother’s passing and neighbors took her into their home for the day. She often mentions a hurricane in 1934 and the huge tree at the end of D Street crashed to the ground. When ice skating on Meadow Pond with the other kids she fell through the ice and was rescued by one of the boys, Oscar Muradian, when he held out his hockey stick for her to grab onto and pulled her out. Once again neighbors helped and brought Shushanik into their house so she could dry out by the stove and then go home.
During the summers it was popular for the family to pack up a wagon with picnic supplies and walk to Purgatory Chasm State Park a couple of miles away, where there were picnic tables, a spring, the cool rocks of the chasm walls where the local children discovered a large section of mica near the caves. After hiking it was time to eat and all the Armenian foods were cooked on the stone fire places found throughout the park. Lamb shish kebab, beef losh kebab with parsley and onions, barbecue chicken, even hot dogs, and pilaf too, with plenty of bread. Patz hatz, Top Hatz and Lavash! Cheese and fresh greens from their gardens. Yalanchi stuffed grape leaves from home. Often relatives and visitors would eat in the great outdoors with the Harabedians and other Armenian families had tables nearby. Sharing food and conversation took place. Probably not so different from life in the old country!
The first generation born in Whitinsville had their high school years dominated by World War II and many young men enlisted in the military services, and some never returned. George had severely injured his arm in an accident and was not allowed to serve. He went to work in the factory and served the war effort by producing material for the military. Susie worked there too for a while and inspected magnetos for engines used in military vehicles. She always points out one building where her father worked, because she used to bring him his lunch and pass it in through a window!
The young women in Whitinsville were all good friends and spent a lot of time together. There were school activities, dances at the community center for the USO, and plenty of Armenian activities including a traditional Armenian wedding recreation all in costume with women taking on the role of the men. Presumably the young men were away in the service or because none would volunteer as actors! Their mothers must have designed and sewn the traditional clothing from their cities and towns in Armenia.
After the war and high school graduation, still teenagers, the children of the immigrants began entering the workforce, getting married and starting families. Sushanik was introduce to Anthony Martin from one of Worcester’s earliest Armenian families who had arrived in America just after the Hamidian Massacres in 1895 and 1896. (The Armenian Immigration Project website shows Sarah Der Kazarian leaving France with 3 boys, Aroutiun, Karekin, and Jacob in December 1897 and arriving in New York on January 11, 1898, and then to Worcester. They were from Kharpert and had ties to Constantinople and Worcester. Aroutiun became Anthony’s (Antranik’s) father in 1918. Their father had been killed some years before and Sarah remarried a Mardiros Demerjian and had the 3rd son, Jacob.)
Sue and Tony married in 1948. The Martins were Catholic and the wedding was held in Watertown, MA, at St. Mary’s Church. The Armenian Mekhitarists presiding and members of Tony’s 7 siblings taking part in the wedding. They had three children: Kenneth 1952, Paula 1954 and Andrea 1955.
George married Louise Paraghamian, from Rhode Island, daughter of Frank and Lillian Paraghamian and sister of Harold (Harry). The wedding was in Worcester at the Armenian Apostolic Holy Trinity Church, on Main Street back then. They had 3 children also, Cheryl, Donna, and Gregory all living today with their families in the greater Worcester area.
The 1950s became an important and active decade with grandchildren arriving and growing, Garabed retiring from Whitin Machine Works, and the newly wed Harabedians leaving Whitinsville, for a trip to sunny California to visit Aunt Oskinaz (Vartouhi) and Uncle Avedis Garabedian and family. They were thinking about relocating to Fresno in 1952. Sue joined the family and tossed three month old Kenny into the back seat of George’s black Buick Roadster, Tony staying behind, and they began a road trip to Fresno. Along the way Zarouhi was honored to meet a Native American chief and she ask him if he would pose in a photo with her and he agreed because she said to him in her broken English, "Me (I'm) like you!" They both understood what it was to be an indigenous person robbed of all possesions, families, and livelihood. Sue and son returned to Worcester, but Ma and Pa, George and Louise stayed on for some time before deciding the West Coast would not work out.
The great return however was not to Whitinsville, but Worcester, eventually Garabed and Zarouhi getting their own home after a lifetime renting, next door to Tony & Sue’s new home. George and Louise settled a few streets away in the Columbus Park neighborhood.
Whitinsville became a time capsule of sorts settling into memory only 20 miles away. An occasional visit to old friends, a church picnic, a few hours fishing at Meadow Pond, a death and funeral to attend from time to time. Plenty of stories to tell about village life in America.
Grandma Zarouhi died in 1975, and after mourning, Dede Garabed asked for some art supplies and spent the next few years drawing his favorite images from memory of flowers and birds his family used in embroidery in old Bursa. He passed away in 1979. Both are buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Whitinsville.
Compiled by Kenneth Martin
