May 31, 2023
I come from the Donabedian family and we just came across this photo. I’m not sure who provided this photo or where it came from, but we would love to get in touch to know more! It looks like there are some numbers written that we can’t quite make out that maybe identify even more family members. This is the first picture we have ever seen dating back this far in our family history!
Alexandre
I’m happy to meet you! We found the picture of the Donabedian family from 2016 thanks to Gabriel Armutlu. It’s the oldest picture we’ve found of our family. We don’t know about the other numbers, and it only shows a part of the family since the Donabedian in Malatia reached 50 people and more. The Donabedian family owned land in Malatia. They owned apricot orchards and other properties. The family also owned a caravanserai. They owned a lot of land, and they had to check it on horseback. They used to travel to other countries for business. They traveled to the Middle East (Syria) and probably other countries too.
My maternal grandfather, Kevork Donabedian, loved poetry, nature, and history (it was his ‘secret garden’). Kevork Donabedian wrote a book about the Malatia dialect and gave it to Armenia in the 1970s. Unfortunately, his name was erased from the book’s credits and replaced with the names of local Soviet Armenians. We still don’t know where his work on Malatia Armenians is.
My maternal grandfather married Hripsimé Kanseyan (Kenseyan) in France. They lived a happy life together.
As far as we know, the Donabedian’s lands in Malatia (present-day Turkey) were seized by the genocidal Young Turks and locals during the Genocide.
Five out of fifty survived the genocide (Kevork Donabedian, his sister and his brother Megerdich, his cousins Levon and Sirarpi). Kevork Donabedian was sure that another cousin had survived the Genocide, but he never had the chance to confirm that information.
