The Arrival of Armenians in East St. Louis

Samuel Wilson
Belleville Township High School West, Belleville

This past year, the world heard of the horrors that the ethnic Albanians suffered under the Serbs. The news brought back terrible thoughts of the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. Unfortunately, neither of these two acts of genocide were the first in history. The very first Christian state, Armenia, suffered one of the most horrible acts of genocide when the Armenian people in what is now Turkey were massacred and nearly forgotten.

Armenia was a biblically important area. Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark is thought to have come ashore, is located in Armenia. Later in the first century, the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew went to Armenia to teach Christianity. Armenia was, in fact, the first political state to embrace Christianity. King Tiridates III ordered Christianity to be the official religion of Armenia in A.D. 301, twelve years before Constantine I declared tolerance of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

However, this first Christian state was not independent for very long. The Romans, Mongols, Tartars, Persians, Russians, and Turks successively conquered the people. The Armenians offered the Romans some of the hardest resistance that they faced during their conquests. By the late 1800s, a millennium and a half later, most of the Armenian people were under the rule of the Turkish Empire.

In 1878 Turkey lost a war to Russia, and was forced to cede parts of Armenia. After this, those Armenians remaining in the Turkish Empire were persecuted. The Armenians demanded reform from the Turkish leader Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, but this only further enraged the Sultan. He saw the easiest way to eliminate the problem of the Armenians was to eliminate the Armenians themselves. Between 1894 and 1896, the Turks slaughtered more than 200,000 Armenians.

The survivors continued on with their way of life as best they could. Many stayed in their homeland despite the constant persecution. But some left their homes to work in industrialized nations, like the United States. They planned to save money, then return to Armenia with what money they saved to make lives easier for their families. Thus, the Armenian population in the United States increased in the early 1900s.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, a group of immigrating Armenians began to settle in St. Clair County. Industrial East St. Louis provided opportunities for those seeking jobs. Most planned to return to Armenia, but some wanted to become permanent residents in St. Clair County and United States citizens. Those Armenians who decided to become permanent residents arrived with their fami-

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lies. The first Armenians to settle permanently in St. Clair County were Mr. and Mrs. Arman Magarian, with a parent, Mr. and Mrs. Mike Fouryigian, and Mr. and Mrs. Hampartz Vartanian with their daughter and son.

Unfortunately, life in the Caucasus worsened for the Armenians. World War I halted all travel back to Armenia for the ones who had left to find work. In 1915 the Turkish government decided it was time to end the Armenian problem. The government started to exterminate the Armenian people. Fortunately, the plan was not totally successful, but the ensuing effort at genocide was still devastating. Many people were murdered in their homes, on death marches, or in concentration camps.

The atrocities ended the lives of two million Armenians, or fully three fourths of the Armenian population in Turkey. To this day, no major concentration of ethnic Armenians exists in Turkey. Instead major groups are in the former Soviet republics and now independent nations of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

After the Turkish genocide, many Armenians roamed Eastern Europe and Russia as refugees. During the period of time as refugees, many family members separated from each other. In some cases, sympathetic Arabs adopted Armenian children and raised them as Muslims to save their lives.

The displaced Armenians began to settle in various parts of the world. Some immigrated to the United States, and some came to St. Clair County. However, the largest concentration of Armenians coming to the United States settled on the east and west coasts. In St. Clair County the Armenian population grew to several hundred, with one count going as high as one thousand.

With the tragedy fresh in their minds, the Armenians started to rebuild in a new home. They settled in groups, as ethnic peoples often do. In East St. Louis, they lived near Brady, Broadway, Converse, Division, Gaty, Kansas, Missouri, and St. Louis Avenues, and between Tenth and Nineteenth Streets. Many started to work at the Granite City steel mills. Others began small businesses. Armenian-owned grocery stores, dry cleaners, ice cream shops, and taverns began to spring up.

Immigrants often built churches in their new homeland. The Greek Orthodox Church in East St. Louis at one time boasted a congregation of two thousand members from the Balkan region and Asia Minor.

Dry cleaning stores became popular among the Armenians. No formal education was needed. Workers labored eight hours a day for five or six days a week. The storeowners themselves worked up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The work was hard, but well worth it. The income provided for family expenses and paid for a good education for the children.

When not working, the Armenians enjoyed traditional forms of entertainment. The "coffee house" was an exclusively male establishment, where men discussed politics and played cards. At family parties, Turkish coffee was a favorite drink served in small cups. Native Armenian dances were popular as well. Bands played songs for gatherings where several hundred Armenians attended.

Of the first Armenian children to arrive, some graduated high school, but most ended their schooling in the freshman or sophomore year in order to help bring in more income for the family. But for the first generation of American-born Armenians things were different. Most completed high school and some went on to college and to graduate school to become attorneys, accountants, doctors, and teachers.

As the children immersed themselves in America, they also held on to their heritage. The Armenian Women's Education Association, founded in the late 1920s, taught the Armenian language and culture.

The horrors the Armenian people suffered under the Turks killed many, and displaced others, but many surviving Armenians came to new homes. They proved to be a strong people and important contributors to the growth of St. Clair County.—[From John Keegan, The First World War; student historian's interview with Lois Karibian, Aug. 18, 1999; Vincent Torigian, "Armenians in St. Clair County," Journal of the St. Clair County Historical Society (1985).]

12 ILLINOIS HISTORY/DECEMBER 1999