Three women work at the relief kitchen cauldrons. 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 station had something over 4,500 children on its books in October 1920. Three women work at three large metal vessels, the largest raised on a built plinth, the left working a long paddle in it.

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

    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.

    Headcount: "we now have a family of something over four thousand five hundred in the Harpoot region alone." Ward, "Harpoot's Large Family of Near East Children," Near East Relief II:43, 30 October 1920. By 13 May 1922 the bulletin speaks of "the 5,000 Harpoot orphans" (Near East Relief IV:19, p. 1).

Three women work at the relief kitchen cauldrons. Harpoot, c. 1919-1922.