Hundreds of boys eat on the ground amid tents. Antilyas, c. 1921–1923.

Location

Antilyas, Lebanon

Year

c. 1921–1923

Item Detail

The Australasian Orphanage at Antilyas, five miles from Beirut, opened in November 1922 in the buildings of a former paper mill that was well supplied with fresh water. Australian relief committees took on its entire support, about $100,000 in contributions during 1922 and monthly food shipments from Sydney by way of Port Said, and Near East Relief named it for them. John Henry Knudsen, a New Zealander, and his wife Lydia, an Australian nurse, directed it, and their own son was born at the orphanage in April 1923. Its motto was "Hold Fast to Honour." About 1,700 children were taken in at the opening, and the roster of 28 April 1923 counted 1,318 boys at Antilyas Seaside and 200 girls at Antilyas Hillside. It held about 1,800 children in November 1922, 1,318 boys on 28 April 1923, and 1,200 boys at the end of 1923.

Context

Nellie Marie Miller Mann (1897–1997) was a member of Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana, and a graduate of Goshen College. The Mennonite Relief Commission placed her with Near East Relief in 1921. She was appointed on 20 August 1921, sailed the same day aboard the S.S. Patria, and reached Beirut on 20 September. At the Syria-Palestine headquarters she was secretary to the treasurer and, by April 1923, in charge of the individual remittance department. She left Beirut at the end of August 1923.

These are the photographs she kept and sent home. They include her own snapshots and prints by colleagues and other photographers, and they show her voyage out on the S.S. Patria, the Beirut headquarters and its staff house, the Birds' Nest at Sidon, the Australasian Orphanage at Antilyas, and the refugee camps and relief work around Beirut and in Cilicia and northern Syria. David W. Mann published his mother's writings as Letters from Syria, 1921–1923 (2013) and gave the originals to the Near East Foundation.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    Rockefeller Archive Center

  • External Link
    https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib

  • Attribution

    Rockefeller Archive Center. Near East Foundation records, FA406. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14.

  • Rights

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  • Notes

    Caption in Letters from Syria, p. 168: "Antilyas Boys at Mealtime"

    Sources for the Item Detail

    • Nellie Miller Mann, Letters from Syria, 1921–1923, transcribed and edited by David W. Mann (Morgantown, Pa.: Masthof Press, 2013), pp. 162–163, 175, 280, 283; Letters from Syria, p. 168 (photograph reproduced).

    • Near East Relief, A Review for 1922 (New York, 1923): "Australia has assumed the entire support of one of the largest orphanages in Syria ... to be known henceforth as the Australasian Orphanage," with about $100,000 contributed during the year and monthly food shipments from Sydney by the Commonwealth Line. https://archive.org/details/neareastreliefre00near

    • Vicken Babkenian, "Australian Responses to the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1930," in Colin Tatz (ed.), Genocide Perspectives IV (Sydney: UTS ePress, 2012), pp. 382–406, at pp. 395 and 398: the site "was previously a paper mill and was well supplied with fresh water," the motto "Hold Fast to Honour," and the directors "Mr and Mrs John H Knudsen of New Zealand."

    • Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, typescript, three sheets, in this collection. It lists every station in the area with its director and the number of children on that date.

    About this group

    • Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Near East Foundation records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center. Finding aid: https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib

    • Nellie Miller Mann, Letters from Syria, 1921–1923, transcribed and edited by David W. Mann (Morgantown, Pa.: Masthof Press, 2013). The published text is edited: where a manuscript survives in the collection it governs.

    • Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, typescript, in this collection.

Hundreds of boys eat on the ground amid tents. Antilyas, c. 1921–1923.