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Memories

Family Album

Old photographs tell the story that names and dates cannot — formal portraits, candid moments, the ancestral home in Central Kerala.

The Chenathara
Family History

From Central Travancore to the foothills of Wayanad — a family who cleared forests and built a new life in Malabar.

275
Members
8
Generations
7
Main Branches
Origins
Central Travancore
The Chenathara family originally belonged to Central Travancore, where they lived largely by farming. Land was limited, families were large, and what could be cultivated was simply not sufficient to provide for everyone or to offer much opportunity to the next generation.
Late 1940s – Early 1950s
The Opening to Malabar
By the late 1940s, one branch of the family began looking northward. Malabar offered large areas still sparsely settled and heavily forested. An important opportunity arose through Mary Koshy, who was married to Chitramezhuthu K. M. Varghese — through this connection, the family was able to approach the then Diwan and obtain access to land. They were told, in effect, that they could clear and cultivate as much land as they were capable of managing.
The Migration
Almost the Entire Family Moved
The family sold what they possessed in Central Travancore, gathered their belongings and moved northwards to Malabar. Almost the entire family made the journey — the only one who remained behind was Mary Koshy, who had established her life in Mavelikara with her husband.
Settlement
Clearing the Forest
They arrived in a region that was still largely wilderness. Dense forests had to be cleared, wildlife was part of everyday life, homes had to be established, and the land itself had to be prepared before crops could be planted. What followed was a long period of hard physical labour — cutting back the forest, tilling the soil, and gradually transforming the land into productive farms. Family tradition holds that the Chenathara family eventually came to possess approximately 400 acres of land.
Today
Malabar and Beyond
The family settled towards the foothills of Wayanad, where rice, bananas, pepper, and rubber became important sources of livelihood. The children of those first settlers grew up in Malabar, followed by their grandchildren and great-grandchildren — many of whom continue to live and farm in the region. What began as a search for land became one of the defining chapters in Chenathara family history.

The Chenathara family — the spelling used here — originally belonged to Central Travancore. Their migration to Malabar in the late 1940s, prompted by limited land and limited means, transformed a farming family into pioneers who cleared forests and built new lives from the ground up.

This record began as a handwritten document, gradually expanded into the directory you see here. It is a work in progress: corrections, additions, and old photographs are always welcome.

Editor's Note

It was in the summer of 1981, when as a fifteen years old, that I made my first journey to Malabar. In many ways, that trip also marked the beginning of my discovery of my mother's family.

My mother's maternal relatives had made their lives in Malabar, and until then I knew very little about them or the place they called home. For a boy accustomed to city life, my first glimpse of Malabar was unforgettable. It seemed endlessly green and beautiful, with wide open spaces, wildlife, birds, fishing, trees heavy with fruit, and a closeness to nature that I had never experienced before. I fell in love with the place almost immediately.

But I was equally fascinated by the people I was meeting. Who were all these relatives? How were they connected to one another? Where had they come from, and how had this family found its way to Malabar?

Out of sheer curiosity, during that very first visit I began roughly charting a family tree, writing down names and trying to understand the relationships between the different branches of the family. I could hardly have imagined then where that simple exercise would eventually lead.

More than four decades have passed since those first handwritten notes. What began as the curiosity of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy gradually grew into a much larger effort to trace, document and preserve our family history, eventually finding its way onto this website.

One person who deserves special mention in bringing this work to its present stage is my second cousin C N Doncy. Collecting the names and details of so many relatives was no small undertaking. It may have required a little prodding along the way, but she persevered and took the time and trouble to gather and put together an enormous amount of family information. I am deeply grateful to her for that effort, because much of what we are able to preserve here today would have been far more difficult without her contribution.

This website is certainly not the end of the journey. It is simply another stage in something that began for me in Malabar all those years ago.

Someday, I hope another member of the family will take what we have assembled, carry it forward, build an even better website, add the generations and family members who follow us, and continue preserving the story.

After all, a family tree is never really finished. Each generation simply adds another branch.

Jacob Oommen (Legy)
Website Editor