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Another Armenian connection - Madras-India

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  • Another Armenian connection - Madras-India

    Life & Style ' Travel January 9, 2010
    Madras Miscellany

    Another Armenian connection

    My latest visitor during this `Season of Search' has been Lucy
    Arathoon from Guatemala of all places. Married to a Mexican academic
    who teaches there, they'd been combining a holiday in India with a
    search for her roots in Madras. And that search took them to Arathoon
    Road in Royapuram, just to the west of West Mada Church Street. But
    though road there was, answers to their question were none. Who was
    Arathoon of Royapuram?

    Arathoon is a well-known Armenian name in Calcutta and I once knew
    several rugby-playing Arathoons from that city. But of Arathoons in
    Madras I knew of none till Lucy Arathoon turned up. And she introduced
    me to John Arathoon who married Margaret Baboom in 1819 at St. Mary's
    of the Angels (now the Co-Cathedral in George Town). John Arathoon was
    Lucy's great-great-grandfather and family lore has it that he was in
    the precious stones business.

    The John Arathoons had two children, Eliza (l827) and Albert John
    Fidelius (Felix) Arathoon; a third child, Josephine, died young and
    was buried in Madras. Elizabeth, who married a Captain Holmes, died
    with her five children when their ship, the Lady Nugent bound for
    Rangoon in 1854 foundered in the Bay of Bengal. Felix Arathoon, born
    in Madras in 1823, was the father of Lucy's grandfather Albert John
    Andoe Arathoon (born in Madras in 1865). Felix Arathoon had married
    Irish-born Louisa Andoe and sent her and their children to live with
    her family in Bath c.1871. Felix Arathoon himself died in the Gulf of
    Aden when the ship he was travelling in to catch up with his family
    sank - and with it, legend has it, went a fortune that he had made in
    Madras. Now I wonder after which of these Arathoons the road in
    Royapuram was named.

    Searching for the Baboom name, I found that Baboom too is an Armenian
    name and that Daniel Rafael Baboom was a pillar of the Catholic Church
    in Madras. He appears to have had a kinsman in Madras, Michael
    (Marcar) Johannes Baboom. D.R. Baboom is said to have died in
    Constantinople in 1821 while M.J. Baboom died in 1810, aged 80, in
    Madras, probably making him the father of the former. A tombstone in
    the San Thomé Basilica is that of a Baboom, but the writing on it is
    indecipherable. It is perhaps that of Michael Baboom.

    What's curious is that three Arathoons died in Madras and there is no
    record of their tombstones.

    http://beta.thehindu.com/life-and-sty le/travel/article77956.ece
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