Women and children line up at a relief shed. Probably Beirut, c. 1921–1923.

Location

Location Unconfirmed, Lebanon

Year

c. 1921–1923

Item Detail

Nellie Miller's desk in the Beirut office stood by the door, and refugees passed it all day. She described women "carrying small babies on their backs or on their shoulders with their legs around their necks."

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. 45: "Refugee women arriving"

    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), p. 58; Letters from Syria, p. 45 (photograph reproduced).

    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.

Women and children line up at a relief shed. Probably Beirut, c. 1921–1923.