ABSTRACT
Eliza was born in Aintab, Turkey circa 1892. Her father's father Der Melkon, a kahana, was Aintab's archpriest in the 1880s. Early in 1909 the family moved to Dortyol, an Armenian town on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, at the insistence of Eliza's brother Mihran, who anticipated Turkish attacks against the Armenians living in the Cilician region. Eliza and Aaron Sachaklian were married in 1910, and soon after left for the United States. When Eliza and her daughter Arpena went to Beirut, Lebanon in 1937 they witnessed this custom still being practiced in the Armenian quarter Eliza had no use for old country ways that relegated women to second-class status. In her home, men and women spoke with equal ease and authority. Eliza's family had been involved in resistance more than once, which ultimately saved their lives.
