Highlights In The Shadows: 2 - Indian Ancestors
Owen Clement goes to India in search of records of his ancestors.
The Clement side of my family’s Indian connection began with my Spanish great-great-grandfather, Miguel Clement. Oral history has it, that he was a stoker, the forerunner of a marine engineer, on a wooden merchant sailing-vessel based in the port of Calcutta in the early eighteen thirties.
Miguel's wife, my great-great-grandmother, whose name or origin after much investigation on my part is as yet unknown, died in 1835 in Calcutta giving birth to William, her first and only child. Miguel handed his baby son over to his wife’s family and returned to sea and, to my knowledge, was never heard of again.
William’s mother’s mother, his mother’s half-sister Mary Archer and Mary Archer’s Spanish husband, Captain R. Delallana, the captain of Miguel’s former ship, raised William in a caring Christian home.
William completed his education when he graduated from the prestigious Roorkie Engineering College in Calcutta, which is still in operation today, with a marine engineer's certificate.
I have a portrait of him from his Carte De Vis (calling card), which shows a swarthy fashionably dressed strongly built young man at twenty-three years of age with piercing dark eyes and determined mouth.
On the 28th of July 1856, the year before the photograph was taken; William married Catherine Arratoon Nicholas aged 16 at the Old Mission Church in Calcutta. Catherine was born on the 7th of December 1840 in Dacca, Assam.
When my wife Jan and I visited the Old Mission Church in the year 2000, the staff informed us that the ledger holding the records of that period was tragically lost in a fire in the 1960's. This was a huge setback for our research.
My great-grandmother Catherine’s Armenian parents were Nicholas Arratoon Nicholas and Catchcatoon (Armenian for 'Gift of the Cross') Arratoon Hyrapiet. Nicholas, born in Julpha, Armenia, had arrived in India as a boy in 1807. He was one of eight children and was educated in the Armenian College in Calcutta.
The Hyrapiet dynasty in India goes back further to Johannes Hyrapiet who, formerly a priest in Asia-Minor Armenia, settled in India and was a Zemindar {Landholder} in the district of Mushidabad. As Armenians spoke Persian, the language of the Mogul court, and were Christians: they were eminently suited to be middlemen. Johannes donated a thousand rupees for the foundation of the Armenian College, in Calcutta. His descendants were entitled to free education by proving their descent by applying to the Wardens of the Armenian Church, in Calcutta.
Johanness married Miriam Hyrapiet in Mushidabad. Catchcatoon Arratoon Hyrapiet, the daughter of Johanness and Miriam Hyrapiet, was born at Mushibad in the year 1819 and married Nicholas Arratoon Nicholas at Mushidabad in the year 1832. Catchcatoon died at 38 years of age in Calcutta on the Second of January 1858.
Their daughter Catherine and William Clement produced seventeen children, which included a set of twins. Tragically only ten survived to adulthood. It is impossible for me to imagine the trauma this would have caused to my great-grandparents.
In the year 2000 my wife and I walked down the now run-down Tottie’s Lane in the centre of Calcutta where my great-grandfather William spent his last days. I tried in vain to imagine how those elegant buildings must have once looked. The 250 year-old Fairlawn Hotel on Sudder Street, where we stayed, is just around the corner from Tottie’s Lane and is a contemporary of that period. We could see that the hotel had once been a stately mansion
Catherine died aged fifty-one on the 5th of February in 1891. William died aged sixty-three, six years later.
The most important document that my father handed to me shortly before he died with the above details, was a few poorly typed and hastily assembled photocopied sheets of A4 paper titled "Domestic Occurrences corrected up to 26-6-31”.
When my wife and I first started studying the document we only saw a list of names and dates. However, the more we delved into them the more we discovered about each individual listed, and were able to work out their connection and his or her story of dramas and tragedies.
I envisage an elderly great or even great-great-aunt painstakingly pecking at a typewriter recording the copperplate writings from an old crumbling family bible and titling it “Domestic Occurrences corrected up to 26-6-31”. Whoever the person was goes my heartfelt thanks as it gave me crucial details of my ancestors.
© Clement 2006
