Saving The Soul of a Past Community

The Armenian Church of Holy Resurrection, Dhaka, Bangladesh

In association with the Armenian Church of Holy Resurrection in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I am pleased to announce the launch of a truly admirable, worthy and very important new heritage project.

This is a global appeal. We are very keen to make this project a community/Diaspora driven venture. We want to appeal to everyone who ever had a connection with the Armenian community in Dhaka Bangladesh. There is little or no history of the community left, we want to try and build the stories, starting from the ground up. The Armenian communities of Bangladesh and India often worked together, regularly moving between the two locations. It is our hope that people with India connections will contribute too.

At our recent launch we issued the following press release.

The Armenian Church in Dhaka Bangladesh is embarking on an exciting, ambitious and unique community and history project.

The church has existed in Dhaka for over 200 years and its community played an important mercantile role in the history of this wonderful country of Bangladesh.

The Church wardens and committee have already completed an extensive refurbishment programme of the building and structure. This renovation process will continue to be ongoing to ensure the Armenian Church will maintain a presence in Bangladesh for many years to come.  The committee now wishes to move to the next phase of the development, and it is hoped that it will be community driven.

Here at the Armenian Church in Dhaka we would like to reach out to the Armenian Diaspora around the globe, particularly those who have family connections to India and Bangladesh.  We would like to invite anyone with a past connection to Dhaka, no matter how small, to get in touch.  We would particularly like to hear from those who might have personal items or memorabilia they would be willing to share with us in digital form. Perhaps your family played a role in the jute industry in the 19^th or 20^th centuries maybe even earlier? Do you have stories, photographs, items of interest that we could help build the history of the community on? Where did your family live, what social activities did they attend, who were their friends, what did they feel about their lives in Bangladesh?

We are keen to reconstruct the history, family stories and vibe of this by-gone era of the Armenian presence in Bangladesh, but we can’t do it without YOUR help?

There are many well known Armenian families with a historical connection to Dhaka and Bangladesh, do you know, or have connections with any Agabeg, Agacy, Aganoor, Apcar, Arathoon, Aviet, the famous Beglar family, Bagram, Basil, Carapiet, Catchick, Catchatoor, Chater, David, Gasper, Gregory, Harney’s, Harapiet, Johannes, Joachim, Lucas, Mackertich, Malchus, Manook, Marcar, Michael, Martyrose, Minas, Nahapiet, Petros, Pogose, Sarkies, Seth, Shircore, Stephanuse, Vertannes, Zorab.

These are just a few of the family names with links to the area.

We would really like to hear from anyone with an association, we are determined to make this a community project with as many digital contributions as people will generously make.

We will produce a book containing all your wonderful stories and items, and all donors will be acknowledged on the dedicated “thank you” page as well as permanently on our new website.

Our co-ordinator for this project is Liz Chater who, through her experience in her work and research with Armenian family history in India, will carefully and sensitively bring all the elements of it together.

To contribute please contact:
armenianchurchbangladesh@gmail.com

We are very excited and are looking forward to working with the Diaspora on this unique venture.

You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

www.armenianchurchbangladesh.com

A Friend In Need, Is A Friend Indeed

 

One of the many hundreds of papers I have received in the documents donated to me by Mrs. Sonia John, a 92 year old Armenian in Kolkata was a Pottah certificate issued by the Calcutta Christian Burial Board. It is for the burial plot of Sonia’s grandmother, Elizabeth Martin. I was intrigued by the fact it was made out to Elizabeth Gregory. Confused by this, I continued to look through the papers and I came across this short letter, written by Elizabeth Gregory to Elizabeth Martin in 1964 transferring ownership.

The next natural question was “who was Elizabeth Gregory?”

The answer to that was easily found on the back of the Pottah certificate, 

it stated the name of Elizabeth Martin recently buried on the 12^th November 1965 and the relationship of the grantee was “friend”.  The two Elizabeth’s were unrelated.

Curious about Elizabeth Gregory, I started to do a little research on her. I could see from her letter of transfer that she lived at 1 Linden Gardens, London in 1964. On checking the voters list for the 1960s[1] I not only found Elizabeth Gregory, I also found a Mary and George A.V. Gregory living at the same address. Knowing that trying to find the correct “Mary Gregory” would be almost impossible, I decided to see if I could find any reference to George A.V. Gregory. There in the baptism records for Rangoon India in 1936[2] was George Aramais Vivian Gregory.

George’s father was Simon Joseph Gregory, I found his grave in my cemetery records for India.[3]   Simon had been born on 17 February 1902 in Tehran and died in Calcutta on 24 March 1942. His wife Elizabeth Gregory was the author of the above transfer letter. She had been born in Calcutta on 6 December 1906[4] and I quickly found her death record for August 2004[5] in London. It helpfully had her date of birth on it, and as it matched exactly to that recorded in the Armenian Church records, I was confident I had found the correct Elizabeth Gregory.

Elizabeth and her son George had left Calcutta in July 1947[6] during the disturbances in India, and prior to partition in August that year. They sailed from Bombay to Liverpool on the ship ‘Cilicia’, the name would not have been lost on her, it was an Armenian Kingdom. Family records indicate that George died in Herefordshire in 2008.

As a friend of Elizabeth Martin, Elizabeth Gregory transferred the Pottah she had reserved for her own burial right next to her husband Simon Joseph Gregory in the Old Armenian Cemetery in the Lower Circular Road. One can only surmise that Elizabeth Martin must have asked her friend if she would be willing to transfer the plot now that Elizabeth Gregory was settled in the UK.  Elizabeth Martin obviously wanted to be buried as close to her own late husband, Jordan Martin who had died in 1953 and had been buried in the same cemetery just a few plots away. You can read the remarkable story about Jordan Martin being a spy for the British in an earlier blog by following this link.

Thanks to Elizabeth Gregory, instead of husband and wife lying side by side, two family friends do instead.

LEFT: Sacred to the memory of Simon Joseph Gregory beloved husband of Elizabeth Gregory and eldest son of the late Joseph Simon Gregory and of Maria Gregory Of Julfa, Ispahan, Iran.  Born at Teheran  on the 17 February 1902 Died at Kurseong on 24th March 1942.*  [remaining script indecipherable].
*date corrected to 1942 from 1948, poor quality inscription

RIGHT: In cherished memory of our dear mother Elizabeth Widow of the late Jordan Martin Born 16-8-1875 Died 11-11-1965 R.I.P. [bottom right inscription: J. Maderia & Co]

---

[1] Ancestry.com

[2] British Library N1-570-79

[3] Liz Chater. I have photographed almost every Armenian grave in Calcutta

[4] Armenian Church Calcutta Baptism Register No. 1888

[5] Ancestry.com

[6] Ancestry.com travel and immigration records