Seven Armenian professors of Euphrates College. Harpoot, 1912.

Location

Harpoot (Kharpert), Turkey

Year

1912

Item Detail

Euphrates College opened at Harpoot in 1878 as Armenia College, taught chiefly in Armenian, and kept an Armenian majority on its faculty. Its buildings stood in the Upper Quarter at the western end of the town, and Near East Relief later used them as relief centers. On 20 June 1915 the leading Armenians of Harpoot were put in prison and taken down to Mezereh, and three days later they were sent out to their deaths. Parmelee was practicing at the hospital that month.

Context

Ruth Azneve Parmelee (1885-1973) was born in Trebizond to American missionary parents and studied with them until the family returned to the United States when she was eleven. She earned her degree at Oberlin and her medical degree at the University of Illinois, then sailed back to Turkey in May 1914 as the first woman physician to settle in the Euphrates Valley. In Harpoot she practiced obstetrics, trained nurses and cared for war orphans, and she was there through the deportations of 1915. She held the post until 1917, resumed it in 1919, and was compelled to leave in January 1922. She reached Salonica that October, opened a maternity hospital under the American Women's Hospitals, and founded Greece's first school of nursing. She stayed in the country, in one post or another, for thirty years.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    Hoover Institution Library and Archives

  • External Link
    https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt596nf1c5/

  • Attribution

    Ruth A. Parmelee papers, Box 6, Folder 1 (Harpoot, Turkey, 1906-1922), Hoover Institution Library & Archives

  • Rights

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  • Notes

    Handwritten across the foot of the mount: "The Armenian professors / in Euphrates College., / Harpoot, Turkey-in-Asia." A printed slip at lower right reads, in provisional English translation from Armenian, "The Armenian professors of Euphrates College" and "1912 Kharberd." A second printed slip at lower left carries a photographer's credit and, provisionally translated, "Euphrates College - Kharberd"; the photographer's name is not legible at this resolution. Parmelee's diary records the men's arrest and deportation. In the entries of 20 to 21 June 1915: "Armenian prisoners (Profs., &c), taken to Mezereh." On 23 June: "The prisoners were sent off from Mezereh in the night - several Profs. among them." Diary of Dr. Ruth A. Parmelee, 1913-1916, Ruth A. Parmelee papers, Hoover Institution. Euphrates College: Houshamadyan, Harput kaza, education and sport, schools part I. https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmamuratulazizharput/harputkaza/education-and-sport/schools-part-i.html

Seven Armenian professors of Euphrates College. Harpoot, 1912.