It is not always easy to trace back your family history. My relatives on my mom’s side don’t speak a lick of English, and my grandmother, grandfather, and great grandfather on my dad’s side all passed away within the last year. It’s times like this that I wish I paid more attention to the family history, not because I have to fill out seven pages for an assignment, but because it’s genuinely interesting. The story of my family history, as far as my father can remember, reaches back to the late 19th century. We are not exactly sure of this date, but a this vague date should suffice. My great great grandfather, or my grandfather’s grandfather, Aram was born in Armenia. His last name, however, was not Vartan. It was Vartanian.
	It is really sad that this is the first time I’ve heard of him, and that we cannot remember his birth date. To the best I can guess, he was probably born in the 1890s.  He was born in Armenia.
My dad says that early in the 20th century, a young Aram left with his family to escape genocide. Originally, I thought that the genocide only happened around World War 1, but I found that there was another incident, called the “Hamidian massacres” during 1894-1896. During this, the Ottoman empire, being Islamic, was led by Abdul Hamid, who believed that the woes of the Ottoman Empire stemmed from "the endless persecutions and hostilities of the Christian world." He perceived the Armenians to be an extension of foreign hostility, a means by which Europe could "get at our most vital places and tear out our very guts." In summation, he wanted to get rid of the Armenian population in his empire, and the result of this is the Hamidian Massacres. Death estimates from the Hamidian Massacre are anywhere from 80,000 to 300,000 people. Not only that, but there were at least 50,000 deaths from parentless orphans as a result of the massacre.
So, this is about the only information I could squeeze out of life in Armenia. I do not know the date when my ancestors first left Armenia, but I assume that it was during or after this massacre, or else I have no other time frame to go by. They first fled to Ireland. Once again, the information I could gather from this period is very lacking. I do not know what year they arrived in Ireland. I do not know where in Ireland they came, or if they came illegally. All I know is they went to Ireland for an unknown period of time. The only information I can get during this period, is that Aram met his future wife here.
As I don’t know why we came to Ireland, I also do not know why we left. And I’m not even sure why we left to Iran. I have found from research that many Armenians left to Iran, and Armenians were especially interested in Iran around 1905 because of a revolution in Russia (I do not know how exactly this relates to Armenia, or how my ancestors might have caught wind of this, but this is what little information I could pull up). 1905 fits in with the time frame, but I cannot prove anything at this point. All I know is we left to Iran.
This is still a very vague point in my knowledge, but I am told that here from Iran, we were sponsored by a family in Boston to come to the United States. Thus, Aram, with his family, went through the legal process of immigrating to the United States. In 1908, we are documented as coming through Ellis Island to the United States. This is strikingly interesting to me because I did research about Ellis Island in my last project, but didn’t even know that my ancestors passed through there. Afterwards, we left through New York, and settled in Boston, I assume near the other family that sponsored our immigration.
I am not exactly sure how long Aram stayed in Boston, but eventually he decided he would move to Eagle Rock in Los Angeles. To clarify, I do not mean that he decided to leave and blindly stumbled upon Eagle Rock. Somehow, although unbeknownst to me, Aram and his wife decided they would move to Eagle Rock and left straight from Boston to Eagle Rock.
According to my father, they moved in the Hollywood side of Eagle Rock. They owned some property in both downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, although I know not what for. My great grandfather, “Great Grandpa Bill” William E. Vartan was born in Eagle Rock, California in the year 1927. His surname would be Vartan, not Vartanian. In order to curb discrimination, they omitted the “-ian” from his name, which was a very easy way to identify him as Armenian. In my research, I found that my family had been saying our old last name incorrectly. At our family reunions, we pronounce the second “a” in Vartanian as a short “a” as in “cat”, but I found that it should be pronounced as a long “a” as in “rain”.
My dad says that Great Grandpa Bill would often recall living in Eagle Rock, and would tell of his father Aram making Armenian food. He would make lahmajoun, which literally translates in Armenian to “meat with dough”. It is a very thin, round, pizza-shaped dough covered with minced lamb and vegetables and sprinkled with lemon juice. He would also make his own special recipe of sarma which is still passed on through the generations today. It is made of bulgur and minced lamb meat rolled in grape leaves. When we have family gatherings, we always make his recipe of sarma, and we always go buy lahmajoun.
{GREAT GRANDPA BILL’S LIFE}
	My grandfather, “Grandpa Bill” William Vartan, was, like his father, born in Eagle Rock, California.
	{GRANDPA BILL’S LIFE}
	My father, Brian Wayne Vartan was born on April 7th in the year 1967.