The Five El Zakhem Families of Dedde, Lebanon

research note by Wesley Johnston, begun 26 Mar 2014, last updated 28 Mar 2014

The following information was provided by Adib George El Zakhem and his wife and second cousin Marianna Seeman Matta and Hanna Seeman Lakkis (John, whose grandmother was Rima ElZakhem) on 1 Mar 2014.

There were originally five El Zakhem families that settled in Dedde, all of them brothers. The name has always been El Zakhem, although some more recent branches have simply used Zakhem.

1. father of Tannous, Rima and Suleiman - This is the branch that includes Adib George El Zakhem, Hanna Seeman Lakkis and George Zakhem.
2. father of Hannah El Zakehm, whose children were Jain, Halim, Fahim, Khoyir, Ibrahim, and ?Mary? - Naim's son Hanna married Adib George El Zakhem's sister Samira, so that these lines interesect at least once. Naim's son Jake's wife (not Lebanese) is the first cousin of the mother of the wife of Adib's son Simon's, so that there is also a non-Lebanese intersection. I am not able to make sense of the dates for this family. So I suspect that Hannah was actually the grandson and not the son of the patriach of family #2.
3. father of Khoyir/Mikhail and Yaccub - Khoyir's son Abdallah was mayor of Dedde; Abdallah's daughter Hanneh (by his first wife Najibah who died) married the son (Salim) of Tannous El Zakhem (family #1), so that George Zakhem descends from both family #1 and family #3.
4. not sure ... there is another ElZakhem family that might be part of one of the first three but so far is separate so that I am carrying this family as the fourth family: the father of Jiris, Seeman, Elies, and Marianna -- Marianna's daughter Wasili Rashid Hanna married family #1 Ibrahim Suleiman El Zakhem. grandson of the patriarch of family #1
5. not sure ... There is an otherwise unconnected Basma El Zakhem who married Elies of family #4. So I am carrying her as the daughter of the head of family #5.

The order in which the families are listed is simply the order in which I found out specifics about them. The order has nothing to do with their birth order. Estimating the birth years for the patriarchs of each family is an on-going process, working back from fully or approximately known dates of their descendants in order to figure out the approximate dates -- and thus the approximate birth order -- of the five.