Persape Parsegian, married and widowed as Izmirian before marrying Misak Karahadian. Great-grandmother of Linda Jean Delijian Gutierrez.
Linda Jean Delijian Gutierrez Private Coll.
Here’s Grandma Kay’s story:
Escape from Bitlis, Armenia 1915-19, Armenia, Russia, USA
In 1915, Keghanoush (nicknamed Kay) was 15, living in Bitlis, Armenia (now Turkey) with her 10 brothers and sisters and their parents. Since her father, Misak Karahadian, was a co-owner of the town’s General Store, with his identical twin brother Setrak, they were considered wealthy and had servants some of whom were Turkish. Before the turn of the century when Kay was born, there had already been one slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks (partly because the Armenians were Christians–in fact, Armenia was the first country in the world to declare itself a Christian nation back in 301 A.D.), causing her mother, Persape Izmirian (nee Parsegian) , to be widowed with several children. She later remarried (to Misak) and Kay was born in 1900.
In 1915 Kay’s father, Misak, knew it was getting dangerous again, so, with the help of his loyal Turkish servants, he put his unmarried children in the American Mission School in Van for their protection. He also arranged for Kay to be married to her teacher. Perseg Mugerditchian was Armenian, but had already been to the United States, and had only returned to join the Armenians in fighting the Turks. Instead, he went to work as a teacher in the American Mission School in Van and became Kay’s teacher. One day, while Kay’s mother and married sister, Yester (Esther in English) were visiting at the school, the Turks killed Yester’s husband and 3 yr old daughter, as well as their father, all of the older children, other family members, and friends. Their baby brother was floated down the river in a basket, like Moses in the Bible; if they had kept him with them while escaping, they’d have been found if he cried, and all would have been killed. They hoped he would be found by a kind Turkish woman and raised as her own.
Perseg managed to get Kay, sister Yester (Esther), another sister Arshaloos (Louise in English), brother Vee (Vaghinag), and their mother, Persape, safely out of the school taking only what they could carry and escaping into Russia in 1915-6(?). While traveling through Russia, the Russian Revolution started in 1917 and continued while they were there. It took 3-4 years to make it through Russia into Siberia. While they were there, they accidentally found their cousin Kay (son of Setrak) who was also born in 1900 just like Keghanoush. They started the trip to the United States, and daughter Mary, Kay and Perseg’s oldest child, was born in a cattle car on the train on the way to Vladivostok in 1919. They boarded the Persia Maru in Yokohama, Japan, and arrived in San Francisco in July 1919. They then traveled to Fresno, CA where many Armenians who escaped had resettled; son, Harold, was born there in 1920. The timeline according to Kay looked like this:
1900-1914 Bitlis
1914-1915 Van (near Lake Van and Mount Ararat)
1915-1918 Alexandropol, Russia
1918 Irgutsk
1918-1919 Vladivostok
1919 Yokohama, Japan (to board the Persia Maru), San Francisco, Fresno, CA
Can you imagine, at the age of 15, losing almost everyone you know, escaping with only what you could carry, having to marry your teacher, coming to a foreign country, having to learn a new language and a new way of life? Kay was up to the challenge, the only sister who became a citizen and got a driver’s license though they’d all gone through the same horrors. She kept a great sense of humor, was silly and quite a teaser. She happened to die the day of the big Los Angeles earthquake on 1/17/1994; that morning when her citizenship certificate hanging on the wall fell, the glass cracked, and it has been kept that way. It seems Kay went out with a bang!