The Descendants of Antoine Yacoub Berouti Have Been Found

In one of my earliest posts, I recounted how archival records revealed that Nicolas Yacoub did not come from Beirut to Jaffa alone. His older brother, Antoine Yacoub, also made the journey and settled in Jaffa. I was able to trace Antoine Yacoub Berouti’s descendants up to 1948. After the Nakba, the rest of the Berouti family lost track of that branch. As a result, this lineage never appeared in earlier versions of the Berouti family tree (hence my surprise at stumbling upon its existence).

Since then, I often wondered what became of those descendants and where they might be living today. I’m delighted to say that this is no longer the case.

Recently, I received an email from Lilianne Beirouti, a name I had never seen in the Berouti family tree. Combined with her subject line: “Bichara Gabriel Berouti” (the second-youngest descendant of Antoine Yacoub known to us before 1948), my excitement grew quickly. Lilianne turned out to be the granddaughter of Bechara Beirouti (updated spelling) and the 3rd great-granddaughter of Antoine Yacoub Berouti. She had come across this website purely by coincidence while searching for more information about her Palestinian roots.

Ironically, when I wondered in my previous post about where in the world the descendants of Antoine Yacoub might have settled, the answer turned out to be surprisingly close: most of them are in Montreal, where they have lived for decades. To realize that many of us Beroutis shared the same city for so long without knowing of one another’s existence is both amusing and a little tragic, a small illustration of how the Nakba upended and scattered Palestinian families.

The Berouti family tree is now being updated to reflect this meaningful discovery.