Nellie Miller stands among orphan girls at the Seaside Orphanage. Sidon, c. 1921–1923.

Location

Sidon (Saida), Lebanon

Year

c. 1921–1923

Item Detail

Near East Relief's Seaside Orphanage stood by the shore at Sidon, where 560 girls were enrolled on 28 April 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

    Catalog title: "Seaside orphanage."

    Sources for the Item Detail

    • 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.

Nellie Miller stands among orphan girls at the Seaside Orphanage. Sidon, c. 1921–1923.