of a total of about 88,500). Visiting Cyprus in 1835, American missionary Rev. Lorenzo Warriner Pease writes "the number of Armenians [in Nicosia] is between 30 and 40 families". In 1841, about 200 Armenians lived on the island (out of a total of 108,600), of whom about 150-160 resided in Nicosia (with a population of 12,000) – according to the record of population by Muhassil Talât Effendi and the writings of French historians and travellers Louis Lacroix and Count Louis de Mas Latrie. The Latin Vicar General Paolo Brunoni also mentioned 200 Armenians in Nicosia in 1848, as well as some others at the Magaravank. In 1874 Belgian traveller Edmond Paridant-van der Cammen estimated 190 Armenians in Nicosia (out of a total of 13,530). Although unreliable for the Armenian population of Nicosia (mentioning only 20 families in 1875), researcher Philippos Georgiou recorded 6-8 Armenian families around the Magaravank and 5 Armenian families in Larnaca. In 1877, newly arrived priest Hovhannes Shahinian recorded 152 Armenians living in Cyprus, while the first modern population census of Nicosia, carried out in 1879 by the District Commissioner, Major-General Sir Robert Biddulph, counted 166 Armenians – out of a total of 11,197 inhabitants. The British colonial censuses that took place between 1881 and 1956 provide us with fairly accurate data on the Armenian population of Cyprus. The following numbers are the combined figures of those recorded as Armenians (by religion) and those recorded as speakers of Armenian: in 1881 there were 201 Armenians in Cyprus (of whom 174 belonged to the "Armenian Church"), who increased to 291 in 1891 (of whom 269 were "Gregorians" and 11 "Armenian Catholics") and to 553 in 1901 (of whom 491 were "Gregorians" and 26 "Armenian Catholics"); the numerical increase was due to the influx of Armenian refugees from the Hamidian massacres. In 1911 there were 611 Armenians in Cyprus (of whom 549 were "Gregorians" and 9 "Armenian Catholics"), while in 1921 their number rose to 1,573 (of whom 1,197 belonged to the "Armenian Church") and to 3,617 in 1931 (of whom 3,377 were "Armenian Gregorians"), as a result of the huge wave of refugees from the Armenian genocide. In 1935 the Armenian Prelature recorded 3,819 Armenians in Cyprus: 102 were "native Cypriots" (mainly residing in Nicosia), 399 resided at the Melkonian Educational Institute, while 3,318 were "refugees", i.e. genocide survivors and their descendants; of those, 2,139 lived in Nicosia,