Collections : [University of Michigan Special Collections Research Center]

Hunchakian Party activist, member of the Central Executive, orator and field worker in Persia, Tsarist Russia, London, various American cities (Boston, Worcester, New York, Waukegan, East St. Louis, Detroit, etc.) and Brantford, Canada. The collection includes family documents and official papers and photographs, correspondence with family, party founders, members of the Central Executive, chapters and members in Persia, Russia, Europe, the US; party circulars, reports and communiqués registry of fighters and groups, minutes and agendas, poems, notes, print material, poster.

The first part of the Hamparzoum Arzoumanian Collection consists of family documents and official papers, birth, marriage, naturalization and death certificates, in memoriam notices, visas/passports, photographs, correspondence between Hamparzoum Arzoumanian, his wife Sona Arzoumanian and family members and other personal correspondence of Hamparzoum and Sona Arzoumanian with friends, students. These provide a sequence of events and dramatic circumstances in Hamparzoum Arzoumanian's personal life that begin in historic Armenia in 1866, through Persia, Russia, and Europe, and end in America in 1909.

The emphasis in the collection is in the Hunchakian Party Activities and Materials in the latter part of the collection. These emphasize the scope and content of Arzoumanian's involvement in the Hunchakian Party, his commitment to its socialist ideology and determination to help the cause of the liberation of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Correspondence with party members, party circulars, reports and communiqués refer to the organization of party chapters from the Caucasus to the US; the rift in the party between those dedicated to Socialism as part of the party ideology and those who insisted on eliminating the socialist ideology of the founders as irrelevant, even harmful, to the struggle of Ottoman Armenians; tensions between the party Center in London and the Regional Executive Committee in the US; party publications and content of official party organs in Geneva, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts; fund raising for party operations, and the organization of volunteer detachments of fighters. This section also provides information about the life of Armenian immigrants in the US, their efforts to organize communities and their commitment to help liberate Armenians in Turkey.

A series of envelopes in the collection reflect the wide geographical area to which Arzoumanian was connected, including: Tabriz (Persia), Bucharest (Romania), London, Paris, New York, Boston, Rustchuk and Varna (Bulgaria), Montreal (England), Tbilisi (Republic of Georgia), Khazakh, Odessa and Novorossirsk (Tsarist Russia), Alexandria (Egypt), Malta and Berlin.

The collection consists of 474 items, spanning the years between 1896 and 1910; items vary from one page to 11 pages. All but the few newspaper clippings, printed matter and fragments are in manuscript form, in a variety of Armenian dialects.