Two in patched rags carry a large round bundle. Harpoot, c. 1919-1922.

Location

Harpoot (Kharpert), Turkey

Year

c. 1919–1922

Item Detail

Near East Relief kept its Harpoot children in families of about a hundred, each under a mairig, or house mother. The planned orphan gift at Christmas 1919 was muslin, raisins, roasted peas and hard candy, eight hundred of them prepared in one evening. Two stand before a plastered building, both barefoot and in heavily patched clothing, the taller holding a large round pale parcel. Over 850 new orphans and women came in from Turkish homes in August 1919 alone.

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 3 (Harpoot, Turkey, 1914-1922), Hoover Institution Library & Archives

  • Rights

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  • Notes

    See 37089 for an oven with comparable rounds on the shelf; the scenes are not connected. Parmelee, Harpoot, 28 December 1919, on preparing gifts for the orphans; Ruth A. Parmelee papers, Hoover Institution. Orphanage families: "Each orphanage has about one hundred children under the direct supervision of a native mother and a big sister, generally a young girl who is a graduate of the American school." Mark H. Ward, "Harpoot's Large Family of Near East Children," Near East Relief II:43, 30 October 1920, p. 2. Intake and detention home: "During August we took in over 850 new orphans and women from Turkish homes ... These new ones are placed in the detention home, where they are cleansed." Parmelee, Missionary Herald CXVI:1 (January 1920), p. 26.

Two in patched rags carry a large round bundle. Harpoot, c. 1919-1922.