The only known Armenian to have served in the Civil War, Khachadour Paul Garabedian, is being recognized with a new grave marker in a Philadelphia cemetery on Saturday, October 1, thanks to an anonymous $10,000 donation and the dedication of fellow Armenian-Americans.
Garabedian was born in the small town of Rodosto near Constantinople (Istanbul) in Turkey, on August 25, 1836, and immigrated to Lowell, Mass. in the late 1850s. There he worked as a machinist and became an American citizen.
In 1864 at the age of 28, he enlisted in the Union Navy.
Garabedian was discharged in August of 1865 in Philadelphia, remaining there for the rest of his life and becoming the first Armenian in the City of Brotherly Love.
Garabedian married Hannah Matilda “Tillie” Wynkoop in Philadelphia on June 18, 1871. The Garabedians had no children, and Garabedian died at only 45 years old on August 25, 1881, apparently of tuberculosis, which he may have contracted years before during the war. He is buried in Fernwood Cemetery in southwest Philadelphia.
An Armenian, Paul Sookiasian, of West Chester, Penn., researching Garabedian’s early life learned that the original grave marker had basically disintegrated sometime in the 1950s, leaving the brave Armenian with his singular contribution to the Civil War in an unmarked grave.
That was “the reason we needed a gravestone for Garabedian,” said Sookiasian, who then brought the story to the Philadelphia Armenian-American Veterans Association.
Sookiasian explained that the group “felt that a traditional ‘khatchkar’ or Armenian cross-stone would be an ideal replacement,” but fund raising continued slowly until an anonymous donor heard of the project and sent the PAAVA a check for $10,000.00.
Continuing the Armenian participation, the artist who designed the khatchkar was Leo Hanian, an ethnic Armenian who fled from massacres against Armenians in Baku, Azerbaijan at the end of the Soviet era. He later settled in Philadelphia where he made stone crosses for churches as well, The Washington Times reported.
