Searching for a Great-Uncle in Uruguay

I’m on the road in SE Europe for several weeks, so this is more of a personal story.  Four years ago, when I visited South America for the first time, I tried to track the journey of my great-uncle, Humayag, after whom my father is named.  He and my grandmother were the two youngest in their family.  When the Ottoman Empire started the Genocide of the Armenians in 1915, families like those of my grandmother, unaware of what was going on in Constantinople, lost everything.  My grandmother was one of only four children in the family to survive.  As the years passed by, the two older siblings ended up in New York, but for whatever reason (most likely the draconian immigration quotas imposed by the US government during the 1920s), my grandmother spent several years in Cuba, and the youngest, Humyag, sailed to Uruguay.

Such a move made sense: countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay were ripe with opportunities, and attracted immigrants from all over the world.  My grandmother eventually made it to New York, and the family saved to bring Humyag from Montevideo to New York.  He never made it--he died at the age of 27.  My grandmother, who was very close to him, was devastated.  The following is a description of the few days I spent covering his tracks in July 2006, culled from an email I sent to my relatives.

What a day . . . how do I start.  I went to the Armenian church (one of 5 in Montevideo) yesterday and they told me the best thing to do was to go to the deathcertificate office at city hall as they did not have any records.  I dashed over there right when they were about to close, but the staff was pleasant and told me to go the next day, when they would open at 10:00 a.m.

So I arrived I think at 9:59 the next morning.  The way the process worked was that each death was logged in a huge book for each year, and then alphabetically  .. . so that was easy . . . I looked under S, C, and then H in case they had the order reversed, as I had no idea how they would have spelled what I think was Humyag Seropian.  I also looked through the K’s really quickly out of curiosity and I would see a few Armenians . . . usually kids . . . very sad.  The clerk helping me, who I would guess was in his late fifties, was bemused by seeing this gringo trying to look up a long-lost relative.

Not knowing exactly when he had passed, I started with 1935, then 1936, and then 1937.  After about 45 minutes, I found him!  There he was.  The clerk shared my enthusiasm, giving me a perky “bueno” with a matching thumb’s up.  It turned out that my great-uncle died on October 15, 1937 at the age of 27.  The cemetery was also listed.  I asked if I could get a copy of the death certificate.  At first the bespectacled bureaucrat paused, said I would have to go to another office, and described all these steps I would have to take and the translation of the Spanish in my overworked brain made the eyes roll to the back of my head--he saw that I was overwhelmed, paused, held up his hand as if to stop me, and then told me that if I came at 1:00 p.m. he would take care of it.

So I took a cab to that cemetery, which was probably a few kilometers from the center . . . the driver was puzzled as to why I would go there, and then I explained, and he was very excited, and kept saying, don’t worry, we will find your great uncle, we will find you great uncle.  He became quite animated actually, and started to improvise and sing some song that I think he had just made up--I don’t know, but every other word was tio-abuelo.

So I arrived at the cemetery.  I entered the office, explained what I was doing, and the fellow working there said he would be a few minutes.

I was getting quite emotional actually . . . you would not have believed the feeling I had when I received yet another massive brown ledger, having already seen his name in that list at the city offices, and then to see his name again in another book. . . with the reason for his death, his age, and the plot where he was buried . . . his reason was something like sin resistincia medicinas . . . I was trying to figure out what that meant, which I assumed explained that he was not assisted by doctors in time.

Then I was crushed.  The man working there explained, very nicely and slowly, that he was buried across the street but that area, where foreigners (most likely poor, they explained to me at the guest house were I was staying), is now a park.  I asked why they would do that, and he did not have an explanation.

I just walked across the street . . . it was rather grey and lacking in character, like any neighborhood in any suburb of a big city . . . not much was there . . . just a park with some flower vendors and people walking their dogs . . . and then I watched some kids play soccer over where he was probably buried and I just had that “life goes on” type of feeling.

I returned to the city hall office in downtown Montevideo, and they had a copy of his death certificate.  His occupation was a merchant I assumed (comercio), he was single, and the address at which he died was listed.

I decided to go to that house, again a few kilometers out.  The house did not look that old, but the others connected to it on that blocked looked like they would be from that era.  I knocked on the door, explained in Spanish why I was there, and asked how old the house was . . . they had no idea and were very pleasant, but that was that.  They were clearly gobsmacked that someone would show up at their door and say, “oh by the way, my great-uncle died here almost seventy years ago.”

So I have a lot of emotions . . . it’s a very uplifting feeling to track down a small patch of my family history, and a bit saddened that there was really nothing else I could find but his death certificate.

I have to say, however, that during the entire experience, the Uruguayans have been very encouraging.  Everyone was more than helpful and very kind.  This had been one of those travel experiences I will not forget.

I am going to a symphony tonight at this beautiful restored theater tonight (the Solis), and then will go to Colonia, an old town in Uruguay tomorrow, and then back to Buenos Aires for a couple nights before going up north.

A couple years later, we went again.  The death certificate office in downtown Montevideo had moved and the hours were even shorter, so we took a taxi to the cemetery.  This time we were greeted by a very melodramatic clerk who was more worried about her purse than helping us, saying that she had so much work to do!  Unfortunately the old ledgers were just stacked on top of each other, and clearly appeared as if they were not taken care of.  It was a lesson learned: the time to research your family history is now--not everything is on Ancestry.com, and many old records are simply neglected as fewer people bother to look at them.