Nellie Miller, left, works in the headquarters office. Beirut, c. 1921–1923.

Item Detail

Beirut served as the headquarters for Near East Relief's work in Syria and Palestine. Nellie Miller worked there from September 1921 as secretary to the treasurer. The post turned over repeatedly. Mr. McAlpin held it in October 1921. In September 1922 she counted a new chief, "the fifth one in less than a year." By 28 April 1923 it was A. E. Bosworth, and by that date she was also in charge of the individual remittance department. In December 1921, she wrote that her desk stood "immediately inside the large open glass door."

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.