Midwest Mahjar: The Recorded Sounds of the Arabic-Speaking Diaspora in the United States at 78 RPM

Rt. Rev. Agapios Golam   Rt. Rev. Agapios Golam, c. 1915 Archimandrite Agapios Golam (1882-1946) was born 23 October 1881 or 1882 and immigrated to the US from Greater Syria in 1912 via passage on the S.S. Martha Washington . He first lived in New York’s Little Syria neighborhood and later moved to Brooklyn with hundreds of other Syrian-Lebanese and Syrian Americans. Golam spoke Arabic, Greek, and English. In August 1916, he accompanied Archbishop Germanos Shehadi on his travels around the United States. Among their stops were a few days spent in the Syrian-Lebanese Community in Williston, North Dakota. A significant number of emigrants from the Ottoman Diaspora settled in North Dakota in the early 1900s and took advantage of Homesteading policies.  The majority of people from Greater Syria who settled in North Dakota were from rural towns near Mount Lebanon, and this, in part, explains why they were attracted to farming in the equally rural Great Plains ...