Garabed Kaloustian: A Constantinople Armenian Doctor and the American Civil War
It has long resided in a folder within the Avedis Derounian Archive, which has been at NAASR since the early 1990s, inside an envelope labeled “Dr. Kaloustian,” but until recently we did not realize its significance, let alone that this year marks the 200th anniversary of this interesting individual’s birth.
 
Opening the folder this past summer, we were surprised to see a photograph of a man in an American Civil War-era Union Army uniform, a man who turned out to be Dr. Garabed Kaloustian (Կարապետ Գալուստեան, 1823-1898).
Photo of Dr. Garabed Kaloustian by Garabed Baghdasarian, active in Constantinople from 1858 to ca. 1890.
M. Vartan Malcom mentions a “Dr. Calousdian” in his pioneering 1919 book The Armenians in America, but gives no photo or additional details. However, versions of the photo have been printed in two English-language publications of which we are aware.
 
The late Mark A. Kalustian (no relation to Garabed, as far as we know), dedicated collector and chronicler of interesting arcana of Armenian life, included a copy of the photo in an article titled “Three Armenian Physicians Who Served in the Civil War (1861-1865),” published in the Armenian Mirror-Spectator (Aug. 24, 1985) and later reprinted without photos in the collection of his articles Did You Know That…? (Arlington, MA: Armenian Cultural Foundation, 2002). The other physicians he discusses are H. B. Matteosian and Garabed Vartanian.
More recently, Hayk Demoyan included in his massive illustrated volume Armenian Legacy in America: A 400-Year Heritage (Yerevan, 2018) along with other “Armenians in the American Civil War” (pp. 34-35).

Fortunately, Mark Kalustian indicated his sources, which led us to Hay ew Tsagumov Hay Bzhishkner [Հայ եւ Ծագումով Հայ Բժիշկներ (Armenian and Armenian-Descended Doctors) (1688-1940) by Dr. A. N. Mezbourian [Տօքթ. Ա. Ն. Մեզպուրեան] (Istanbul: Becid Basımevi, 1950), which offers the most substantial information we have yet seen about Dr. Garabed Kaloustian.
In the under-studied area of Armenian-American history, the decades prior to the 1890s are especially murky, as a tiny number of Armenians began to form the basis for what would become a more substantial and established community after the mid-1890s.
 
We offer this single-object Library Treasures in the spirit of encouraging further interest in this “antediluvian” era of Armenian-American history. The following biographical sketch derives mainly from that given by Mezbourian.
Left-hand photo: Seated, Dr. Garabed Kaloustian. Standing, Dr. H. B. Matteosian [Հ․ Պ․ Մատթէոսեան]. Date and location unknown. Right-hand photo, same as item from NAASR Derounian Collection. Published in Mezbourian, p. 175. Visual clues suggest the photos were not taken on the same date--e.g., Kaloustian is wearing different trousers in the photo with Matteosian.
Garabed Kaloustian was born in 1823 in the Yenimahalle (new neighborhood) of the Üsküdar district in Constantinople. He, along with Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian [Ներսէս Պատրիարք Վարժապետեան (1837-1884)] and translator and linguist Bedros Keresteciyan [Պետրոս Քէրէստէճեան (1840-1909)], who is said to have compiled the first etymological dictionary of Ottoman Turkish, were first cousins, the children of three sisters. Garabed received his primary and secondary education at Cyrus Hamlin’s seminary in Bebek.

After graduating from the Bebek seminary, he taught for some time. Then he was invited by the Americans to Smyrna, where he served as a teacher at the local American school and worked as a translator for the missionaries.
 
Subsequently, he moved back to Constantinople and married in 1853. During the Crimean War from 1854 to 1855, he served alongside his wife Heghine as a translator in the British Sanitary Corps in Constantinople and Trabizond. After the end of the war, they journeyed from Smyrna to New York on a cargo boat carrying figs. Between 1856 and 1859, he attended the New York Medical School and received his medical certification.
 
During the American Civil War of 1860-1865, he served in the Union army in the medical corps as a doctor and surgeon and received a citation and a promotion. After the end of the war, Kaloustian returned to his birthplace, settled down, and achieved success as a doctor, living in Beyoğlu and then Üsküdar. The photograph in the NAASR collection was obviously taken after his return to Constantinople.
 
Kaloustian was a friend and close associate of Garabed Panosian [Կարապետ Փանոսեան] (1826 or 1828-1905), the longtime editor of the Armeno-Turkish publication Manzume-i Efkar (see Masayuki Ueno, “One script, two languages: Garabed Panosian and his Armeno-Turkish newspapers in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire,” Middle Eastern Studies 52.4, pp. 605-622). The two traveled together throughout the Bithynia region and Kaloustian helped provided local residents with free medical services.
 
After the resignation of Dr. H. B. Matteossian in 1866 and Dr. Mozian in March 1868, the leadership of Surp Prgich Hospital was entrusted to Panosian. He was supported by Kaloustian, the chief physician, who was concurrently working at the Military Hospital in Eyüp. According to Mezburian, “The tenure of these two Garabeds was short-lived and gave rise to gossip.”
 
Garabed Kaloustian died in Üsküdar; he committed suicide by throwing himself from a window. He was buried on January 7, 1898, in Üsküdar, according to the Surp Khach [Holy Cross] Registration Book.

Compiled by Ani Babaian and Marc A. Mamigonian
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