Lebanese in Bangor were few but proud

An e-mail connecting old and current Bangor prompted this column. On Oct. 23, I wrote about the Queen City’s large immigrant population a century ago, which accounted for nearly a fifth of its residents. I briefly told the story – or as much of it as was printed in the Bangor newspapers – of a crisis in the George family, members of the city’s “Syrian colony.”

The story went like this: Mantoria George, 13, had run away from home and taken up with some Italian men, as she apparently had done in the past. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Maroun (spelled Maron in the newspapers) George, signed papers turning her over to the state school for girls at Hallowell.

George, a former peddler, was a store owner by 1906 who had lived in Bangor for 14 years. “When he came from his native country, he had very little, but by dint of saving the small sums which he earned he … was eventually able to buy his store. He is known and trusted in Bangor, and is one of the influential men in the Syrian Colony in this city,” reported the Bangor Daily News on Sept. 24, 1906. George told a reporter that his religion, which was unspecified, dictated the harsh action involving his daughter.

A few days later I got an e-mail from Lou George, Maroun’s great-grandson, providing additional insight into this story. He wrote: “My great-grandfather came to Maine in the 1890s from Lebanon (which was at that time a part of Greater Syria). He was a proud man with strong family values, disciplined work ethic and strong Catholic faith, which he instilled in my grandfather, William George, who instilled those values in his son Maroun George (my father), who definitely instilled those values in me …

“What happened to Mantoria George (my great-aunt)? When she finished at the Girls Industrial School in Hallowell, she made peace with the family, married an Italian from the Kapaso family and moved to Rhode Island. She became a very religious lady and became very active in the Catholic Church in Rhode Island.”

I called Lou, a retired Job Corps teacher and real estate broker, to ask him a few questions. “We were the minority of minorities,” he said of Bangor’s Lebanese. In the first decade of the 20th century, he estimated, there were perhaps 100 Lebanese families in Bangor, or between 200 and 300 individuals.

Unfortunately, the 1910 census does not include a category for either Lebanese or Syrians. It includes two categories for Turks – European and Asiatic – with a total of only 69 individuals. Lebanese may have been incorporated in these groups since Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire. But there were probably some Greeks included there as well. To make matters more confusing, the accuracy of the Census is always questionable, especially when tabulating immigrants who may not speak English.

The only book about the Pine Tree State I have seen that tries to sort out some of these complexities is Neil Rolde’s “Maine: A Narrative History.” He wrote that legally the Lebanese were Turks, but they spoke Arabic. They lived in Greater Syria, which included Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. Most of them came from the mountains of Lebanon and “in time they viewed themselves as Lebanese and continue to do so … at least two-thirds were Maronite Christians, owing obedience to the Pope in Rome, 20 percent were Greek Orthodox and 10 percent were Greek-rite Catholics. There was also a scattering of Protestants and at least one Moslem,” according to Rolde. The greatest number of Lebanese in Maine settled in Waterville, where there is today a Maronite Christian church.

In Bangor, the Georges and some other Lebanese attended St. John’s Catholic Church, while others helped found St. George Greek Orthodox Church. Lou could not recall any Lebanese social organizations in Bangor except the Daughters of Lebanon, which his mother helped found in the 1950s and 1960s.

Complex tensions among Ottoman, Muslim and Christian elements in Greater Syria smoldered through much of the 19th century and into the 20th. Maroun George and his wife, Zerapha Nagem, were from villages near Sidon, said Lou. Maroun used to go up on the roof at night after they were married to guard against Turks who were killing Christians in the neighborhood. The family decided it would be wise to leave for the United States after he “did a number on some Turkish soldiers,” according to Lou.

Lou’s grandfather William George, who was born in Sidon, Lebanon, on Aug. 14, 1889, returned to the Middle East to fight against the Turks with the French army in WWI before the United States entered the war. He already had a wife and five children who lived at 192 Hancock St. with his parents. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre fighting with “Syrian battalions of the French army in Jerusalem,” according to a story in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Sept. 26, 1918.

When he returned to Bangor, he said he hoped to be drafted to fight in the U.S. Army, according to the Commercial story. By then the war was almost over, but he was ready to go again. “I fought with the Syrians, sailing with many of them from New York,” Pvt. George said with quiet pride in his face, “but I am an American, America has been my country for years and I will go back and fight in the American army if they will have me,” stated the newspaper story.

Such was the state of patriotism among many American immigrants at that time.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.