Arthur, Sona Hairabedian is my cousin. She suggested that I contact you, so here I am! I am descended from the Armenians that immigrated to Brookshire & Pattison Texas starting in 1882 and continuing through the 1920s. My great grandmother, Takouhi Donigian Hagopjanian, immigrated to the US with her 6 children (including my grandfather David) in 1904. These early Armenians in Texas became successful farmers, cotton ginners, merchants, professionals, and community leaders. Takouhi was the widow of Hagop Hagopjanian, who had changed his surname from Nigoghosian; they resided in Jaffa, though Hagop's roots were in Jerusalem. Though only 1/4 Armenian, I was raised to be proud of my heritage and have always self-identified as Armenian. I am known as the "keeper of the Armenian history" of Brookshire and genealogy is my obsession. In 2017, I organized an Armenian Homecoming in Brookshire to bring together our descendants and pass appreciation of our history and heritage to the younger generations. We had around 120 descendants in attendance and it was deemed by all to be a great success. On April 27th of this year, we will be having a 2nd Armenian Homecoming. I believe that you and Sona had discussed publicizing our event in Armenian press. The answer is a resounding yes! So many of our descendants are not in the area and it has been a challenge to find everybody, so as much publicity we could get, the better. The event is open to all Armenians and was also attended last time by members of St. Kevork Armenian Church of west Houston. I am a member of the Armenian Genealogy Facebook group and have had several members (especially those already in Texas) express interest in attending this year. In 2017, I had my Ancestry tree printed for display at the Homecoming. I included only the 7 generations of my Armenian family and it was 21 feet long and 3 ft high.....it was the hit of the event. I am currently working on documenting the Armenians of Brookshire & Pattison in a tree format. My goal to to display the interconnectedness of the Armenian families, along with pictures and personal histories. Any help you could give us with publicity of the event would be appreciated and I can provide details if you can help us. Also, Sona had mentioned your connection with our Nigoghosian family. I tried to get in touch with Kevork Nigoghosian's sons Stephan & Gary in New York, but didn't have any luck with a return call. Sometimes people are suspicious of cold calls like mine. The reason for my call was to see if one of the males of the family would be willing to do a Y-DNA test. They are the last vestiges of the Nigoghosian Family Y-DNA. The rest of the Y-DNA is lost to only female progeny or no progeny at all. I was hoping to establish a relationship with the family and also get them in contact with Sona who lives about an hour and a half away. If you have contact info and let them know that a Texas cousin would love to get in contact, that would be wonderful. I hope to hear from you! Ava Waters Henry Granddaughter of David Agopian

Hello, I've been researching the history of my family in Jerusalem (Mukhtarian, Nigoghosian, Misagian, Hairabedian), and much appreciate the work that you have done in making the pages of the birth, marriage and death registers of the Armenian Patriarchate available online. It has cleared up a great deal of uncertainty, and corrected some misconceptions. However, while looking through the Death registry, I was unable to find records for the years 1864-1867. It seems that the link to the page containing these records (page 4, left side) was not posted online. Is that page available, and if so, could you send me the link? I'm trying to find the date of death of my great-grandfather's elder brother, Alexan "Bolsetsi", probably in 1866. Thank you in advance for your help, Sona Hairabedian

Thanks for alerting us to this. The problem has now been fixed. Editor