Mark's Genealogy

Mr and Mrs Rajiah, Mark’s great grandparents, c. 1941

On Mark’s maternal side, the earliest recorded ancestors are his great-great grandparents, Mr Paulraj and Mrs Pushpammal, who lived in Nazareth, a small village in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. Very little is known about them except that Mr Paulraj had a flourishing transport business in Ceylon, and that he was a strict disciplinarian of their eleven children, of whom Mrs Stella, Mark’s great grandmother, was the oldest, born in 1926. She married Mr Rajiah from the nearby village of Mukkuperi. Mrs Stella was an intrepid and tenacious woman, being the first woman to hold a vehicle driving license in the whole district. She moved to the town of Palaymkottai to educate her daughters, Mrs Sarojini - Mark’s grandmother - and Mrs Jasmine. The two sisters were the first graduates in the family, matriculating in Sarah Tucker College. Mrs Sarojini took a degree in Zoology, followed by a Bachelor’s in Education. She moved to the nearby town of Thoothukudi to teach at St Aloysius’ Convent. She married Mr Gunapal David and moved to Madurai. Mr Gunapal was born in the village of Sathankulam. His mother died giving birth to him, and he was brought up by his grandmother. Mr Gunapal, who died in 2007, was involved in lay work as an evangelist, following a Pauline encounter with Christ in his mid-thirties. Mr Gunapal and Mrs Sarojini’s only child, Mrs Preethy - Mark’s mother - was born while the couple was still in Madurai, but Mr Gunapal’s employment at the State Bank took them to several places before they finally retired in Chennai. Preethy married Deepak Edwin in 1992.

Mr Yesudian Devapriam, Deepak’s great-grandfather, was a registered medical practitioner in Nazareth. He and his wife, Mrs Nallamuthu Ammal, both lived into their 90s and had thirteen children. Mr Chelliah Devapriam, Deepak’s grandfather, was their youngest child. Chelliah Devapriam graduated with a bachelor’s degree in teaching and worked as a teacher and headmaster in the Diocese of Tirunelveli. Later, he became the Secretary for Education in the Diocese of Tirunelveli. He was a mathematics teacher and authored popular mathematics and English exercise books for schoolchildren. On the other side, Deepak’s great-grandparents were Mr Dharmakkan and Mrs Koilammal. Interestingly, Dharmakkan was also a mathematics teacher, teaching at the Cathedral High School in Tirunelveli until he retired, and Koilammal was a housewife. They had two children: Daisy Chelliah, Deepak’s grandmother, and a son, Mr George Muller. George Muller was an English lecturer who became the principal of Pope’s College in Sawyerpuram, which he established for the Diocese of Tirunelveli. Daisy Chelliah was a teacher who taught for a while, and later served as a board member of Sarah Tucker College until she moved to Chennai in her seventies.