Location

Syra (Syros), Greece

Year

1927

Item Detail

Syra (Syros), Greece, November 1927. Orphan boys wash radishes in the basin at the harbor house, with "10,000 of them" heaped along the wall, as relief workers look on above.

Context

Fred and Carrie Midgley of Worcester, Massachusetts, served with Near East Relief on the island of Syra (Syros), Greece, from 1926 to 1928, Fred as agricultural director at the orphanage. The institution sheltered some 1,400 Armenian and Greek children orphaned by the genocides and the 1922 destruction of Smyrna (İzmir). The Midgley papers were given to the Near East Foundation by their granddaughter, Nancy Winter Taylor, and are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Farm and Vocational Training - These show the orphanage farm that Fred Midgley built and ran: the fields, gardens, and livestock, and the farming and seed-saving he taught the children. They raised much of their own food.

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Orphan boys wash 10,000 radishes, Syra, Nov 1927