Reuniting the Alkazins

Welcome to our guest blogger, Marjorie Merod who contributed this post!

Many families were divided in the course of immigration. David Alkazin left the United States in 1900 with his eldest daughter Rosa, and son Elias. It was a full six years before their mother and his wife, Mariam followed with the younger children. Mariam and her children Alice, Michel, Afife, and Antsun traveled across the Atlantic on the La Trourraine for 9 days and arrived in New York on November 12, 1906 where they were reunited with the rest of the family. The youngest, Afife (Ethel) may never have met her father as he left Lebanon the year she was born. In the United States, the family name was spelled Alkazin, but on the manifest it is spelled Kazem. Al-Khazin literally means “the treasurer.”  When the “al” was dropped, the name becomes simply “treasurer.” Some of the family’s first names were also changed. Mariam became Mary, Afife became Ethel, and Antsun became Anthony.