1981_09 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper September 1981

              Page 5
Hye Sharzhoom
September, 1981
Armenians in Fresno...
By Hagop Terjimanian
This year marks the centennial of the first Armenian settlement in
Fresno. Frank Normart, alias Mardiros Yanukian, came to Fresno in the
late 1870's. He was a native of Marzwan in Armenia, who had come to live
in Philadelphia in 1874. He was so pleased to have been in America, escaping the horrors of Ottoman Turkish misrule, that he pledged to become
a new man, hence he changed his name to "Normart" — which means
new man in Armenian.
The pioneers who followed Normart's footsteps considered Fresno as a
favorite town, since the land they saw resembled their original homeland—
the vineyards, olive groves, fig trees, pomegranates, and the climate
seemed to them a welcome omen — travelling half way around the world
they had finally found a home away from home.
Armenians had come to America in much earlier times. In the historical
accounts relating colonial America, we meet the name of an Armenian
merchant "Martin Ye Armenian" who settled in Jamestown in Virginia
in 1618. During the same period, John Smith, an English captain, brought
a number of Armenians to America, who were preferred over the "vagabond gentlemen English colonists wearing silk and shunning work..."
In Smith's account, the Armenians were hard workers and were skilled in
making pitch, tar, soap, ashes, and glass beads which were used as currency in trading with the Indians. What is even more illuminating about
those early Armenian settlers was to find out that "In 1619, the Poles, and
their fellow workers of German and Armenian origin went on strike. They
demanded the right to vote and full equality with the other colonists..."
In a tiny community this was equivalent to a major rebellion...indeed "the
first consciously political upheaval in America for the purpose of extending
rights to the common man. In it men of different backgrounds acted jointly
against injustices for the first time in the New World, "commented historian
Louis Adamic, in his book ' 'A Nation of Nations.''
The story of those early Armenian immigrants reads like an epic. Men
like Reuben Minassian, who came to California in the heydays of the Gold
Rush, later joins Mormon leader Brigham Young, becomes a farmer, a
hunter, a landowner, buys himself a silver mine, sells it, marries a Scottish
woman...and in his ripe age pioneers in sugar manufacturing. In 1881 the
Seropian Brothers arrive in Fresno. They soon ventured into the packing of
dried figs, which they shipped to cities in and outside California, carrying
them in mule drawn wagons. A year later there came another group of
settlers, including Steven Shahamirian, Hadgy Agha Peters and the Mark-
arian family...The Fresno Morning Republican, in its issue of March 26,
1905 presented their story, "...the story of the old M. Markarian, is as
interesting as it is pathetic...He arrived in Fresno destitute, without a
penny, without friends and without shelter to 'rest himself in' ...The condition of Fresno, as he relates it, was not any better than his own country
at that time. The population was perhaps 1000, with a few stores on Mariposa, and with plenty of gopher holes on J Street. He says the people used
to chase rabbits on J Street, and on Mariposa, next to the Grand Central
Hotel, six lots with a fairly good building were for sale for *1200 for a long
time, but no one would buy..."
The early settlers in Fresno met a great many difficulties and privations,
as they had to adjust to the conditions in a new environment. And for many
years there was discrimination against them. Armenians were prejudiced
against for a variety of reasons .Some mistook them for Turks, because most
were Ottoman subjects. Others resented their clannish features, their
thrift and industry. Anti-Armenian feeling took the form of discrimination,
in both housing and employment. They were refused partnership in
lodges, fraternities and veteran's organizations. Hubert Philipps, commenting on the "Armenians in Fresno County" (in Ararat, 1962) stated:
"in the 1920's and extending into the 1930's we could scarcely place a girl
of Armenian ancestry in a teaching position following graduation at Fresno
State College. School Boards would take a girl with a Nordic name and a
"C" grade in scholarship and teaching ability over a girl with an Armenian
name and "A" record in both of the above qualities.''
"We had hard times, but we never felt heartbroken," remembers now
Aram "Zipper" Moushovian, a resident of Fresno since 1910. Aram, aged
86, has lived with his wife Agnes for 52 years, "all these years I have never
stopped working;" he says, " 'What can I do?' has been my motto.which I
have learned from my ancestors. The local people did not accept us,
because they did not know us well enough to appreciate our virtues, and
they also did not like the way we Armenians treated one another. In the
early years we worked as a community, going from one church to the other,
and when an Armenian was threatened or insulted, we joined hands and
"beat" the "enemy" ...But we soon became divided by sectional and
sectarian conflicts, and this cleavage widened as the years went by...' 'Aram
Zipper, alias Aram Moushovian, came to Fresno from Kharpert, joined the
U.S. Army Signal Corps and went to France and served until war's end.
He returned to Vladivostok, Soviet Far East, and later served in Japan,
China and the Philippines.' 'After the end of World War I every person was
his own," reminisces Aram Zipper, "then came the Depression, which
forced the bankruptcy of many Armenian farmers. Most could not pay
for the land, and half of our community left for Los Angeles and most never
returned..."
The horrors of World War I and the genocide of the Armenian population
of the Ottoman Empire created an influx of Armenian refugees — and those
who had survived the holocaust and the deportation — the few fortunate
landed at Ellis Island, the gateway to America..."REFUGE FOUND
AFTER YEARS OF HARDSHIPS'' was the headline news in the September
30, 1922 issue of the Fresno Morning Republican. "Agter fours years of
struggle in the wilderness, through famine infested Russia, and with the
Soviet at its worst, and then through the immigration offices at Ellis Island
with a hairbreadth escape from deportation, the Agajanian family, consisting of 11 members, arrived in Fresno yesterday...Freedom? Not yet!
The old man's eyes glowed when he recalled yesterday the massacre of
three years ago. Vengeance of the Turks was fiercely wrought. Little
babes were held aloft bayonets. Men and women perished. They were
thrown into wells instead of being buried. Snow was deep and the road over
the mountains recalls the march of the 10,000 of Xenophon" But this is not
the end. Reading through the pages of Fresno papers, such as these:
in the Fresno Bee: "YEARS OF HEARTACHE END AS 8 ARMENIANS
REACH FREEDOM" — the plight of the displaced in German concentration camps...
...the first 100 years
And so they came from the prisons, the concentration camps.. .they came
as refugees to America — the land of the free, and to Fresno, the "Garden
of Eden," as the early settlers were made to believe...So a hundred years
ago, when the conductor called out "Fresno" and the Armenian travellers
looked out the train window at the hot, dusty village of livery stables,
saloons and dirt streets, they couldn't believe it was the promised land.
Some even refused to get off the train. But there was no turning back...
"By their sweat, blood and toil the Armenians built this county," summed
up Dr. Robert Weber in 1975, when he was asked to comment on the
launching of the first Armenian Community Day School in Fresno.
"My Favorite Town — Fresno, California," so wrote William Saroyan
in an article published in 1941. Saroyan as much as the Armenian raisin
growers made Fresno a world famous city and presently the world capital
of agri-business...Nowhere else one finds so many names of Armenian
ancestry who made it from rags to riches..'' FAME OR FORTUNE KNOWS
NO TIMETABLE FOR THOSE WHO MUST CHASE A DREAM" headlined an article in the Fresno Bee, of January 29, 1978...Krikor Arakelian,
see 100 Years, page 8