Life & Style ‘ Travel January 9, 2010
Madras Miscellany

Another Armenian connection

My latest visitor during this `Season of Search’ has been Lucy
Arathoon from Guatemala of all places. Married to a Mexican academic
who teaches there, they’d been combining a holiday in India with a
search for her roots in Madras. And that search took them to Arathoon
Road in Royapuram, just to the west of West Mada Church Street. But
though road there was, answers to their question were none. Who was
Arathoon of Royapuram?

Arathoon is a well-known Armenian name in Calcutta and I once knew
several rugby-playing Arathoons from that city. But of Arathoons in
Madras I knew of none till Lucy Arathoon turned up. And she introduced
me to John Arathoon who married Margaret Baboom in 1819 at St. Mary’s
of the Angels (now the Co-Cathedral in George Town). John Arathoon was
Lucy’s great-great-grandfather and family lore has it that he was in
the precious stones business.

The John Arathoons had two children, Eliza (l827) and Albert John
Fidelius (Felix) Arathoon; a third child, Josephine, died young and
was buried in Madras. Elizabeth, who married a Captain Holmes, died
with her five children when their ship, the Lady Nugent bound for
Rangoon in 1854 foundered in the Bay of Bengal. Felix Arathoon, born
in Madras in 1823, was the father of Lucy’s grandfather Albert John
Andoe Arathoon (born in Madras in 1865). Felix Arathoon had married
Irish-born Louisa Andoe and sent her and their children to live with
her family in Bath c.1871. Felix Arathoon himself died in the Gulf of
Aden when the ship he was travelling in to catch up with his family
sank – and with it, legend has it, went a fortune that he had made in
Madras. Now I wonder after which of these Arathoons the road in
Royapuram was named.

Searching for the Baboom name, I found that Baboom too is an Armenian
name and that Daniel Rafael Baboom was a pillar of the Catholic Church
in Madras. He appears to have had a kinsman in Madras, Michael
(Marcar) Johannes Baboom. D.R. Baboom is said to have died in
Constantinople in 1821 while M.J. Baboom died in 1810, aged 80, in
Madras, probably making him the father of the former. A tombstone in
the San Thomé Basilica is that of a Baboom, but the writing on it is
indecipherable. It is perhaps that of Michael Baboom.

What’s curious is that three Arathoons died in Madras and there is no
record of their tombstones.

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