Family Background
Shafick George Hatem was born into a Lebanese-American family in upstate New York. His father Nahoum Salaama Hatem moved to the United States from the village of Hammana in the Metn mountains of Lebanon in 1902, to take a job at a textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1909, on a trip to Lebanon, Nahoum married Thamam Joseph, a woman two years younger from the village of Bahannes.
George Hatem's parents were of Maronite background. Some older sources claim that the family was of Syrian Jewish extraction, but according to modern biographers, that was a misconception, although quite common even during George Hatem's life.
Soon after being married, the Hatem family moved to Buffalo, New York, where Nahoum took a job at a steel mill. It was in Buffalo where their first child, George, was born on September 26, 1910.
Read more about this topic: Ma Haide (George Hatem)
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