family history: Two Centuries of a Family Story

In an era where many people know little of their own background and are often unable to trace their lineage much beyond their own grandparents, the rich story of the Gertmenian and Devirian families is a great testament to a family that knows and cherishes its own culture, traditions and historic foundations.  In a broader sense, too, it is the story of the many thousands of Armenian people who came to live in America following the great Armenian genocide.

The documented Gertmenian history began in 1812, with the birth of Avadik Gertmenian, in Hadjin, Turkish Armenia.  Avadis, (as he came to be known), grew to become a successful merchant and weaver, marrying Hartoon Keopelian, three years his junior, somewhere around 1842 or 1843.  The couple had five children, but only the eldest, Mardiros, (“Hadji Agha”), and the youngest, Gostantine, (“GA”), survived.  The story of the Gertmenian family, and of over 400 descendants, traces from these two brothers.

The Devirian and Gertmenian families came to be joined through the 1894 marriage of Christina Devirian, the eldest daughter of Sarkis and Miriam Devirian, to the youngest Gertmenian son, Gostantine.  The marriage changed the destinies of both families forever.

The First Journey to America

Christina Devirian’s father, Sarkis, was born in Hadjin, in 1850 and, as a young man, studied for the ministry in Marash, where he met and eventually married a young teacher from Kesab, Miriam Afarian.  In 1884, Sarkis left his young family, (then with two of an eventual five children), to continue his theological studies at Oberlin College in America.  Although he returned to Hadjin in January of 1887, the seeds of the American opportunity had been planted.

By 1894, the Turks, in a prelude to the great atrocities that were to follow, had begun to make things very difficult for the Armenians in Turkey.  A large part of Hadjin was destroyed by fire, which was believed to have been set by Moslem incendiaries, and many other atrocities occurred.  Sarkis was falsely accused of holding meetings against the government and he was to be held for secret trial.

Sarkis and Miriam were tending to Miriam’s ill father in Kasab, with their children still in Hadjin, when word of the intended trial was received.  Sarkis had to escape and he looked toward America, where he had studied ten years earlier.

Sarkis went to Beirut and, leaving his wife there, in the care of friends, boarded a French steamer.  The ship made a tense stop in Smyrna, where an officer came aboard looking for him unsuccessfully, and then continued on to Corinth, Greece and Marseille, France.  From there, he took a train across France to Le Havre, and finally boarded the transatlantic steamer L'Abourgan for America.

Miriam, while Sarkis was en route to America, returned to Hadjin, where the children had been in the care of Sarkis' father.  Within a few weeks, several areas around Hadjin were besieged by Circassian Mohammedans but the city succeeded in defending itself because of its mountainous terrain and narrow passes.  The family took refuge with an American Missionary and after about three months went to Adana, on the southern Turkish coast.

In America, Sarkis obtained the loan of some money from friends in Binghamton, New York, and was able to get passports for his family.  Finally, in June of 1896, Miriam and the children came with her son-in-law, G.A. Gertmenian, to the United States.  They were forty days on the water before arriving at Ellis Island, where Sarkis met them. 

Reunited, the Gertmenian and Devirian family had arrived in America.

The Genocide

While the youngest Gertmenian brother, G.A. came to America, with his wife Christina and daughter Bessie, the older brother, Mardiros, (“Hadgi Agha”), remained behind in Turkish Armenia.

Mardiros had married Dirouhi Tour-Sarkissian in 1869, at the age of twenty-four, and they had thirteen children, of whom only five reached maturity: Avadis, Miriam, Apraham, a daughter who died in a fireplace accident as a young bride, and another daughter, Rebecca, who died while in exile.

Mardiros was a man of substance and maintained two homes, one in Hadjin and the other in Adana, where he and his two sons, Avadis and Apraham, had a mercantile establishment.  Unlike the men of his era and region, he traveled extensively, and had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his wife and eldest daughter, Miriam.  From then on, he was known as Hadji Agha, the title Hadji being conferred on all those who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Agha, a title of distinction in Turkey. 

In 1900, Hadji Agha visited the Paris Exposition and then continued on to the United States to visit his brother, G.A.  When it was time to return home, the Turkish government would not allow him to do so, and he was forced to remain in the United States until 1909, when the government relented and allowed him to return to Hadjin. He returned to a huge welcoming celebration and full of fantastic tales of praise and admiration for the Land of Freedom.

By the time of Hadji Ahga’s return to Hadjin, the “Young Turks” of the government had already begun the first mass genocide of the twentieth century. 

First, the leaders of the Armenian communities were snatched from their beds and taken away, never to be heard of again - a fate earlier escaped by Sarkis Devirian.  Next, all able-bodied Armenians serving in the Turkish army's labor battalions were murdered.  Finally, with the leaders and the fighting men eliminated, the Turks began the final phase of their program.  They called it "deportation," a mass uprooting of a people from their homes and their so-called re-settlement in the arid deserts of Syria. 

Within a few months after the order had gone out of Constantinople, in April of 1915, a million and a half Armenians were on the march.  During the first days of the march, they were robbed by the Turkish villagers and peasants, and then by the Kurds who committed blood-chilling atrocities.  By the end of the Turkish “program,” an estimated 1.5 million Armenians had perished.

In Hadjin, the order of deportation came in the spring of 1915.  The 28,000 Armenians of Hadjin left in groups, at intervals of a few days.  Hadji Agha’s family were among the last to depart.

The Gertmenian’s spent four years exiled in the Syrian dessert.  They were allowed to keep their two horses, (which was a godsend), and they all lived together in one very large tent, which Avadis had used as a traveling store.  Somehow, they managed to survive.

In 1919, the family was able to return to Adana, then under French protection, and Hadji Agha’s two sons, Avadis and Apraham, resumed their former mercantile business.  The two brothers were in Hadjin, just prior to its siege and destruction by the Turks and, sensing the danger, decided to return to Adana. 

Avadis advised Apraham to leave immediately and he would follow in a few days, after he had tied up the loose ends of their business.  A few days turned out to be too long.  After Apraham left, the Turks besieged the town, and Avadis was killed, along with the thousands of people then living in Hadjin.  This left just Apraham, of all of Hadji Agha and Dirouhi’s thirteen children.

The Second Journey to America

By 1920, the second Turkish uprising was in full force, under Mustapha Kemal, and the French abandoned their protection of the Armenian population in southern Turkey.  The second great Armenian exodus began, and this time it was a permanent departure.

The remaining Gertmenian family – Hadji Agha and Dirouhi, the wife and children of their murdered son Avadis, and son Apraham and his family – began their long journey to America.

Apraham Gertmenian, with wife Marie and children Margaret, Norman, Annig and Roy, journeyed to Beirut, Smyrna, Greece and eventually sailed for the United States, from Marseille, France, on 26 November 1920.  They arrived in New York, aboard the ss. Canada, on 13 December 1920, accompanied by Manual Gertmenian, (the third son of Avadis), who posed as one of Apraham's children for purposes of entry to the U.S. (This required falsification of all the children's birth dates, which caused some confusion for many years).  The money needed for the passage fare was raised by selling Marie's cherished possessions of gold bracelets, neckpieces, pins and rings, given to her at the time of her marriage.

Henry and Gary Gertmenian, with the help of their uncle G.A., came to America in July 1921, less than a year after the death of their father Avadis.  Arriving in New York on the ship Temistacles, they eventually settled in Reedly, California and, saving for nearly two years, raised sufficient funds to bring the rest of their family from Beirut. 

In 1923, the remaining Gertmenian family, Hadji Agha and Dirouhi, Avadis’ widow Zarouhi, and her remaining children, Sebooh, Ruth, Lucy and Alice, came to America and settled in Pasadena, California, where the Gertmenian family had already established firm roots.

The New Home

The Gertmenian and Devirian families, upon their immigration to the New World, tended to settle in New York, perhaps owing to Sarkis Devirian, the first to arrive, having initially moved there with the help of local friends.

Sarkis, soon after the arrival of his family in 1896, established a home in Rochester, New York, where he supported his large family by going into the business world. 

Sarkis’ daughter, Christina, and her husband G.A. Gertmenian, who had arrived in America with the rest of the Devirian family, settled in Binghamton, New York, about 150 miles away.  The Gertmenian’s had one daughter, Bessie, who had been born in Adana, but during the period in Binghamton they had seven more children.  A son Henry was born in 1898, but died when he was a little more than a year old.  A daughter, Grace, was born in 1902; Harold, in 1904; Alice, in 1907; Virginia, in 1910; Helen, in 1913; and Constantine, in 1915.

When Apraham and Marrie Gertmenian arrived in America, in 1920, they settled in Syracuse, New York, midway between Rochester and Binghamton.  (They also added to their family, with a fifth child, Virginia, in 1923.)  By then, however, both the Devirian and GA Gertmenian families had moved west.

In 1914, Sarkis Devirian’s wife, Miriam, was not well and the doctor recommended they go to California for her health.  So the family all moved to Pasadena.  They purchased an orchard on North Lincoln Ave., bounded by Altadena Drive, Mariposa, and Casitas Ave., and established their home there.

In the meantime, back in  Binghamtom, GA Gertmenian’s business prospered but, with his father-in-law having moved to California, he came under increasing pressure to join his wife’s family.  He and Christina made a trip to California and liked what they saw, so decided to make the move as well. They returned to Binghamton, then shortly afterward, G.A. returned to Pasadena to negotiate the purchase of a home at 919 Columbia Street.  He was able to do this in large part as an exchange for the home in Binghamton.

In 1918, three of their daughters, Bessie, Alice and Helen, were sent ahead to California by train.  They were met by their Aunt Mary Salisian, who took them to her home on North Euclid Ave. until the remainder of the family started west in an Overland touring car.  They hired a driver, who was assisted by Harold, aged 14, but found the driving difficult.  Driving as far as Chicago, they took a train the rest of the way, until the family was reunited in their new home in Pasadena.

In 1923, with the two eldest sons of Avadis Gertmenian, Henry and Gary, already settled in Pasadena, the family patriarch Hadji Agha, his wife Dirouhi, and the balance of the Avadis’ family, arrived from Beirut.

And finally, in 1925, Apraham, Hadgi Agha’s remaining child, and his family also arrived in Pasadena, from Syracuse, with their five children.  They settled in a home on Villa Street.

The Gertmenian history began with Avadis and Hartoon Gertmenian.  Hadgi Agha, their eldest son, lived on, in Pasadena, far from his beginnings in the rugged mountain passes of Hadjin, until he passed quietly in the home of his son, Apraham, in 1938.  He was 92.

Gostantin, G.A., the younger son of Avadis and Hartoon, also passed in 1938.  He was 72.

Compiled by Glen Gertmenian, July 2005

from the Gertmenian/Devirian Reunion Book, 1990