Interview with Mary Abrahamian and Roxie Maljanian by Bruce M. Stave and Sondra Astor Stave, Armenians in Connecticut Oral History Project, New Britain, Connecticut, July 22, 2013. BRUCE M. STAVE: Okay. Okay. Interview with Roxie Maljanian, and Mary Abrahamian, by Bruce M. and Sondra Astor Stave, for the Armenians in Connecticut Oral History Project, July 22, 2013, at the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection in New Britain. So first, thank you for participating, and since there are two of you, I would like to get your voices. So Mary, would you say something just to— MARY ABRAHAMIAN: Okay, I’m Mary—Yessian was my maiden name—Abrahamian, and I was born in New Britain. Lived most of my life here, married a local boy—same church, same nationality. And we have four children, and that’s about it. [Laughs]. BS: Thank you. Okay, and now Roxie? ROXIE MALJANIAN: My name is Roxie Yessian Maljanian, and I, too, am married to an Armenian, but from out of town. And I’m married and have three children who are married. And I’ve been in this community since birth, also, like my sister. BS: Okay, good. And which, if I may ask, one of you is the older sister? Okay? MA: Well, she looks younger. RM: Well, yeah. [Laughs] SONDRA ASTOR STAVE: Okay, Roxie has identified herself as the older sister, because they’re not going to— BS: Okay, so the first thing I’d like to ask you—I understand both of you were born in the United States, but your parents were not. So, could you talk a little bit about your parents’ experience in Armenia, or in Turkey? RM: Start? MA: Well, I’ll talk about my father. My father was not born in historic Armenia. He was born Nicosia, Cyprus. BS: Okay, this is Mary speaking. MA: Yes, Mary speaking. My father’s name was Joseph, Jarazh [?] Yessian, but his parents, the Charles Yessian’s— BS: Could you spell? MA: His name was Joseph, translated from Jarazh; that’s the Armenian. But his family must have emigrated from Turkey in the 1800s, so consequently my father was born in Cyprus, not in historic Armenia. So he came to this country 1912, and so he knew nothing about the massacres, other than what he heard from his mother, because we had massacres in 1895 also. [Telephone rings] And he came with his parents. He was probably a teenager when he came from Cyprus, and he married an Armenian woman, my mother. And Roxie will tell you about my mother, where she was from. BS: Please. RM: When my father came—this is Roxie speaking. When my father came to America, like Mary said, he was the oldest of the family, and they were working in— SAS: How many children? RM: There were four children in his family, three boys and a girl. Two of the boys were born in Cyprus, and the daughter, and then the fourth child was born in America. So the youngest of his family got educated in America, and was able to finish high school and go the regular route, and had a good American job. But my father had to quit school at—eighth grade, Mary? MA: I think so. RM: I think so, and went to work in the factories of New Britain, which had many factories here. SAS: And what kind of factories did he work in? RM: He was a tool—in the tool and plane department of Stanley Works, Stanley Tools. And there were many jobs for the migrants, immigrants. That’s why they came to New Britain. So he was looking for a wife when he was like, twenty? Maybe in his early 30s, maybe. BS: Do you know if he knew anyone here? RM: Oh, yes. New Britain was a big population of Armenians, already, like Mary said. They started coming in the 1890s, and they built a church on Tremont Street, which still stands. BS: Is that St. Stephen’s? RM: St. Stephen’s, and all the Armenians in New Britain at that point, in the 1920s, let’s say—it was still 1925—all went to that parish, all denominations of Armenians, whether you’re Armenian Catholic, whatever. And my father, when he was going there, was looking for a wife, when he was in his, probably, mid-twenties, late twenties. And my mother, who was now born in historic Armenia—now, I’ll give you a little background of her life. And she was a little girl in 1908, born, so— BS: What was her name? RM: Her name was Rose. Vartoohi is the Armenian name. BS: Can you spell? RM: V-A-R-T-O-O-H-U— MA: O-U. RM: O-U. Yeah, two spellings. BS: O-U-H. RM: O-U-H-I. And that’s translated Rose. BS: Rose. RM: Yeah, Varthoohi means Rose. And my mom was seven years old at the time of the genocide in 1915. BS: Fifteen. RM: So she was in the village of Ichme, which is in Harpoot, Armenia— the historic Armenia. Harpoot, and Ichme is the village, I-C-H-M-E, or without an H. And my mom’s background was more turmoil, because her mother died when she was little, two years old. So her aunts were taking care of her in Armenia, and then the genocide came. So at that point, when she’s seven, eight years old, all the little girls— you know the background of the genocide in that area. So they were all in fear of what was happening in their village, and the aunts were hiding the children, anyway, and then—I should have gone to the genocide, should I? No. BS: Well, you can if it’s particularly— RM: It affected them. BS: Yeah, if it had an effect. RM: Yeah, so the only way these little girls could survive is to be with, you know, some aunts or people protecting them. The soldiers came into Turkey, into these villages, and started collecting the men and the boys—anybody ten and over—and they were supposedly putting them in the army, but it was all a cover-up of what they were doing. And the people were getting fearful. And so they knew something was wrong, and my mother wrote her memoir, in Armenian. I brought it with me, but my sisters and I translated it after she died. We did the trans—she wrote it when she was in her 70s. From when she was born, and what—the things she saw and heard. So what they did with these children—one by one, the houses got emptied as the village got—the men got collected. And so everybody was hiding more. And my mom’s situation—she was hidden with an Armenian aunt, who was with a Turk for a little while. And you know, they liked these Armenian women, and you know, they would protect them, supposedly. So my mother lived with that man, and her auntie, for a little while. I don’t know how long, Mary. MA: I don’t know. RM: Yeah, we don’t know what the period. But eventually, they had to escape out of the villages, because they knew it was getting more dangerous. So— BS: Was this after 1915? RM: Yeah, yes. Nineteen—now, in April of ’15 is when they start— BS: Right, they started. RM: —really getting into all the villages, and it was getting worse for everybody. So my mother tried to, you know, get out of the village somehow. I don’t know. There was some wild stories. I can’t go into all of them, but eventually these little girls and boys got to be protected in an orphanage. So they set up the German orphanage, and who else was doing? The American—you know, the— MA: The Near East Relief. BS: Right. RM: —came and started setting up orphanages in all these villages that were—there were little girls, mostly little girls. There were some boys. The boys were mostly taken on the— MA: The desert. RM: Yeah, desert. Some of them were killed; some of them were working as little farm boys for Turks and the Kurds. But the little girls were most—mostly girls, and we have a picture of my mom in the village of the orphanage. I have one picture I’ll show you later. And she stayed in that orphanage from the age of, maybe, eight until eighteen. BS: Oh, for ten years. RM: Ten years. And what was happening is they were—my mother never criticized the orphanage, because she said they were learning skills. They were teaching them crafts, reading, you know. So those girls that were in the orphanages were at an advantage. Some were taken into the homes of people and just, like they were little— MA: Servants. RM: —servants to people. BS: Do you know how many kids would be in each orphanage? RM: Well, each one maybe had 100 kids, at least. A picture—I’ll show you one picture. Her orphanage had, let’s say, 100. And each of these orphanages were in the different villages, so New Britain got settled by many, many of these orphans who later survived, and they had lots of get-togethers once they got to America. So through those years, my mother had an aunt and an uncle lived in Massachusetts, in Cambridge, and the aunt knew what was going on there.