Patricia Barber

Patricia is a veterinarian with a century-old Armenian heritage in the state of Maine. She has two sons, aged 30 and 25, and is eager to begin searching through her Aunt Margaret’s belongings for historical memories of their family history as Armenian immigrations.

Question:

Tell me about your family.

Answer:

My grandparents came over from Turkish Armenia. They hadn’t met yet. They came individually. My grandmother Rose (Vart) came over with her father and siblings, sisters and brothers.

Question:
What was her last name?

Answer:

Gononian … She was born in Baiburt, Turkish Armenia in 1894. She settled in Watertown, Mass. She married my grandfather Jack (Hagop) Barbarian in 1914.

My grandfather came over I think with his brother. And originally, my understanding is from family history, that his last name was Kharibian. He settled in Portland … he was born in Kharpert, Turkish Armenia in 1889, 

When it came through Ellis Island, they couldn't spell his name or understand what he was saying. And they looked on his sheet and he was a barber. And so they said, “Barbarian.” I've since learned that there's no such name as Barbarian in Armenia. So it was an interesting, that kind of solidified that -- that could have happened. So they were Barbarian -- my, my Papa Jack. 

And then they met, so this was proximately 1912, 1913. They met, I think, at a wedding in Watertown. Rose and Jack got married, moved to Portland. I'm not sure about it, Jack may have been in the Portland area also. So, got married, they originally lived somewhere on Munjoy Hill, first year, with another Armenian family, and then moved to Oxford Street. So their house at Oxford Street was what is the Oxford shelter now I think and they may have lived with Andy Mezoian … they lived with another Armenian family. So they split the house and he had a barbershop, Jack had a barber shop right in Longfellow square. Which I think is now the porn shop.

And then Rose went to beauty school, but she didn't tell anybody. So she used to, she had a daughter, my Aunt Margaret, 1915. And then she went to beauty school, and the next door neighbor, she would walk to class and the next door neighbor said, you know, told on her, she's doing something nefarious, you know, leaving the house. And so but she went to beauty school, and then she opened up a salon at her house and the ladies would come and my aunt would make the Armenia coffee and my grandmother would make the pastries and they would all go. It was in her house on Oxford Street… I have all of her curling irons and it's really cool. I have all the paraphernalia from there that my aunt gave me, my aunt Margaret. 

So she (Rose) eventually had four children. So, Margaret, and then Gus -- Gus Barber -- and Allie, Allie Mougalian, was her married name now, with their married name. And then my dad, John Barber. So he was the youngest. He was born in 1925. So as a young boy, he was paper boy, Portland. He was very tenacious kid and got into a lot of fights.

… My grandmother Rose died in 1942 or 43. So she died early … possible heart attack or stroke or pneumonia. Anyone really knows who's in the hospital. And she went downhill quickly and she died. And so my dad was 17. He asked permission from his father that year to go into the Navy, ’42 ‘43. And he said, You need to graduate high school first, so he graduated high school, he was 17 years old, and they signed the papers and he went off to World War Two, no doubt mourning his mother, no doubt.

So, he actually entered the army as Barbarian. The Barber came about when my aunts Allie and Aunt Margaret learned what the connotation of barbarian was, getting teased in school, they both went to Portland High School. And they decided, and I'm not sure who actually decided, they changed their name to Barber. And that's how Barber came to be. Because they didn't want to be associated with barbarians.

So let's see. So my dad goes into the Navy … is actually on the second wave of Normandy, I guess. And the boats that came in after the initial assault. Yeah, never spoke about his service at all. So, I don't really have stories about that. Came back after the Navy …  my family had moved to Coyle Street  -- Gus and Margaret. And Papa Jack had gotten remarried at some point in there. And I'm not sure when. He had gone to a social gathering and there was a woman there, Mariam was from the same village he was from in Turkey. And so they knew each other as children. And they got married. And Mariam has a story where she had a son, and he didn't come over until after a lot of the atrocities in the 1915. Had a son …  It was a baby. They were fleeing from the Turks, they had to leave the child because he would give away their location. They came back and the story they told us is the child of God. Who knows what they really came back to. But, so she was mourning the loss of her son. But when she married, she met my grandfather, Jack.  He had his son, Gus was there with my dad's older brother. And I guess Gus reminded her of what he would have looked like and she decided to marry. I'm going to marry this man and have this family that you know, I didn't have. So that was my step grandmother.

Question:

What was her first name?

Answer:

Mariam … she was “Mary” on her coming into the country papers. I don't know what her maiden name was. So, she never spoke English, ever. I remember her speaking Armenians and we had no idea what she was saying, but she was very nice. And my Papa Jack died in 1966. So that was, again, that was a young child. I was three or four years old. 

And, so step back a little bit, my dad left the service and went back to Coyle Street and the family all went together there and he became a boxer. He was a Golden Glove boxer for the Portland Press Herald. I think he won the championship for the lightweight. There's a newspaper article with him winning the championship.

Question:

How old was he? How was he when he did that, like in his late teens, early 20s? 

Answer:

So he served four years. So early 20s, early to mid 20s. And at that time, also, my uncle Gus had started Barber Foods, or at least it was a grocer at that time, it was early Barber Foods. So he was also sort of settling in and becoming a businessman in the community. 

Then my dad went to school, he went to Detroit to go to school with my cousins in Detroit. The Gononians … settled … outside of Detroit, so he went there and tried to go to school, tried to go to medical school, didn't get in, and then ended up going back into the service, meeting my mom in Old Orchard Beach, at a bar. And like two weeks later, they got married.

And then he went off to France to do some more military stuff that he goes to -- Korean war time, in that area, ’52?  And she went off to join him in France, and they came back home, settled in Scarborough, and that's where I was born and grew up. 

Question:

And was your mother Armenian?

Answer:

Nooooo. That didn't go over very well at first. My older aunt Margaret was the only one that really accepted her. And when they came back, they were in France for a while, my mom came back, she was actually pregnant for the first time. She'd had a miscarriage and my aunt took care of her. But she never felt she was fully accepted by the rest of this family.

But, you know, I remember her telling me she learned Armenian. She learned a few phrases and words in Armenian so that she knew when they were talking about her . 

Question:

What was her name?

Answer:

Paula, she’s passed. Paula Viney? was her maiden name, so Paula Barber.

And my dad was very close to his family. We all grew up together with my cousins. We always did Christmas together. We always went to the Armenian picnics, and doing dances and they were big. They always went to the evening Armenian dances that my aunt Margaret was integral in organizing

In 1963 he bought Anthony’s Restaurant on Center Street in Portland. So he owned a restaurant for a long time, through the 70s anyway.

And then, so in that time, my uncle had Barber foods. So they're pretty well businessmen in in Portland. And my aunt Ali had married a Mougalian, the rug company, Mougalian’s. 

The all did pretty well -- the oldest daughter Margaret never married. I was pretty close to her. She died when she was 98 and yeah, so I was I miss her a lot. But family was big. Armenian food was always part of our history and celebrations. My cousin Kathy Barbara and I -- Gus Barber’s daughter -- still try to get together once or twice a year and we pick up the Armenian cookbook and we’re like okay, we're going to make this and this. So we've been trying to continue on the history and the knowledge of trying to cook Armenian.

Question:

What particular foods do you like to cook the most or that you remember the best?

Answer:

We always had katah (bread). My Aunt Vehanoush was an excellent cook so we always had dolmas and tourshi (pickled vegetables, khema (raw steak), Basterman, I actually made that, it’s hard to make but …that's the dried meat, the dried meat. It's pretty, it's pretty cool, you just have to dry it and put spices in it. And, and we all had  at our weddings, my sisters and I  --  there was three daughters, John had three daughters. And so we all had an Armenian band at our wedding. And a big thing of khema.. And that was my dad’s kind of sendoff to us.

Question:

What's your knowledge of your family's history with the Genocide or any sort of massacres?

Answer:

Well, I know that they left before the worst of it. And I'm not sure what prompted that or how they were able to do that. Except for that story from Mariam about the infant, I don't really have much other history, I guess, based on their time during the massacres. My cousins, the Gononians , my grandmother's maiden family, they have a pretty extensive history book that my cousin's father, all the way back to the village and all of that. I have a copy of that, but I haven't looked at it in a long time.

Question:

Did the Genocide ever come up in family conversations?

Answer:

The only thing that ever came up in family conversations was the hatred for the Turks.  And that was that was all you know, I just remember that. Just like sitting on the ground whenever you know, a Turkish something, whether it was music or Camel cigarettes or whatever, you know -- Turks.

Right there wasn't any explanation of why. They never really told those stories, those sort of bad, bad stories. Just that it happened and I think a lot of it was they mostly wanted to Americanize and move on. I mean, you know, they loved their history and their culture, but they just wanted to be Americans. I think -- hence the “Barber.”

Question:

Did you ever look do any looking into it yourself? Out of curiosity? How did you become more aware of it, other than their reference to Turks?

Answer:

Um, yeah, I even remember when I was in seventh grade I and we had to do a book, a research report, and I did it on Armenia. So, I learned a lot doing that, going into the library, the old Portland Library, that beautiful building and doing my research. And then I guess, just as they were so proud of their culture that I still am very proud of that and I always try to reconnect and I'm big on history, and I love old houses. And so I'm trying to reconnect with the historical part of it, like how to cook Armenian and you know, I took the Armenian language online, not very good at it.

Question:

I bet it is, I’ve never even tried and I wish I had

Answer:

Well, there's that virtual Armenian college and you can take Eastern Armenian or Western Armenian. So I tried the western Armenian, which is what we speak as diaspora; it's, pretty, pretty cool. And now my son, who is in California, trying to break into acting, he's become quite interested in going to Glendale, because that's close to where he lives. And he's been talking to a lot of the Armenians there. And he's very, very proud of his Armenian heritage, which warms my heart. You know, when we had the war here not too long ago, and he was sending me, you know, flags and people flying the flags over in Glendale. And so that was kind of nice to see.

Question:

Did your parents or grandparents ever talk about, or in your experience, have you ever experienced any prejudice about being, you know, Armenian or different? Or about being dark-complected in Maine? Did anything like that ever come up?

Answer:

I think certainly my, my father did. I remember him saying they used to call him “camel jockey,” you know. That just, I guess that's what he started fighting with people, I don't know. But he, you know, he definitely hated that. I remember him telling us about the gangs in Portland -- the Italians against the Armenians against the Greeks and the Irish. And so they were always, they always had to defend themselves. I don't recall though, a whole lot about that. And I myself, never felt any of that. I think my experience was that I was more exotic than a lot of people. And so that was a positive thing. So they would always ask me, you know, where are you from? With background or whatever. And I don't look totally Armenian because my mom is French. So, a strange combination.

And again, learning a lot about that research project. And that clarified a lot of that for me: “Between the Black and the Caspian Sea,” and, and then it has the whole, it was Russian for a long time. And I guess I just realized myself that now, Armenia now is not Armenia, is what our grandparents knew. And it's more Russian, and my cousin Kathy went to Armenia and she said, she didn't really feel any kinship with anything in Armenia, it was all more Russian. But as soon as she went to Turkey, she felt at home, which was interesting, the food and everything … technically, you know, they're in Turkey. They weren't in Armenia, but they are Armenians. This is an interesting dichotomy. 

Question:

So it seems to me that that you're very interested and very proud and still very aware of your Armenian background. Even though you're, you're like me, third generation.

Answer:

Yeah. And I'm trying to retain a lot of that, more so, (because) I think it's getting lost, it's doing the natural Americanization, it’s mixing with a lot of other things. But you know, it hit me when my aunt died. There's nobody left to tell the stories first-hand.

Question:

What do you do for a living, do you have children?

Answer:

I have two boys, 30 and 25 and I'm a veterinarian. Well, I was a veterinarian, I'm semi-retired now from veterinarian, as a career. Actually, half semi-retirement is because I have almost all the contents of my Aunt Margaret's house from Coyle Street, where they lived for 50 years. And I haven't even gone through the boxes yet. Can you imagine what I’m going to find in there?

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