San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ALEX T. DARAK
A native of far-off Turkey, Alex T.
Darak has had a life filled with interest and adventure, especially in the days
of his youth. He was born at Diarbekr, Turkey, on the River Tigris, on August 31, 1866,
and was fortunate in attending Euphrates College at Kharput,
an American College established there by the Congregational Church. Here he received the A. B. degree in 1885,
and subsequent to his graduation he taught school in Kurdistan and in Trebizond,
on the Black Sea, covering a period of five years. He and his brother Joseph wrote a book
dealing with Mohammedanism, and as this got them into trouble with the
authorities, Mr. Darak was obliged to flee from the country to save his
life. He took refuge on a French steamer
and was hidden in the captain’s cabin and taken to Marseilles. He reached New York February 29, 1892, and
here started to work with an oriental rug concern, and in 1895 he became
manager of the oriental rug department of the Bloomingdale Bros. Department
Store, at Fifty-ninth Street and Third Avenue, dealing in oriental rugs, and
two years later he opened a business of his own at Sixth Avenue and Eleventh
Street, where he had a large clientele among the wealthy New Yorkers, as he carried
an exclusive line of fine oriental rugs which he imported.
In 1906 Mr. Darak sold out his
business and in the spring of 1907 he came to Kingsburg, Fresno County,
California, and bought a forty-acre vineyard and fruit ranch, which has since
been the family home. In 1920 Mr. Darak
opened up his place of business in Stockton at 314 Channel Street, handling
oriental rugs and making fluff rugs and rag carpets, and in September, 1922
moved to his present quarters, 420 East Channel Street, where he manufactures
fluff or rag rugs and repairs all makes of rugs and particularly oriental
rugs. It was while in New York he found
it necessary to master the repairing of oriental rugs, so as to please his
artistic patrons; so he is today prepared to cater to the most artistic tastes
of his Stockton clientele.
His marriage at Brooklyn, New York,
October 12, 1895, united him with Miss Arousiag Shaljian, born in Constantinople, and a graduate of the
American College there. They have three
daughters, all graduates of the Kingsburg high school. Elizabeth K. is the wife of Z. P. Malcon, a graduate of Stanford, and now manager of a 450
acre ranch and vineyard in Tulare County; Beatrice, who graduated at Pomona
College in piano and pipe organ, is teaching music at Fresno and Kingsburg;
Dora Susan is now attending Heald’s Business College. Mr. Darak, who became a citizen of his
adopted land soon after arriving here, is a thorough American and a wide reader
and student. He was made a Mason in Roonie Lodge, No. 746, A. F. & M., afterwards demitting
to Lodge 294 at Kingsburg.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1513. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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