Nellie Miller crouches with three children. Sidon, c. 1923.

Location

Sidon (Saida), Lebanon

Year

c. 1923

Item Detail

The Birds' Nest at Sidon was Near East Relief's home for the youngest children, from infants to nine-year-olds. Maria Jacobsen, a Danish nurse who had gone out to Harpoot in 1907 as a missionary of the Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere, took charge of 208 children from Cilicia at Zouk Michail by July 1922 and moved the household on 1 May 1923 to a villa above Sidon rented from a Druze prince. She named the house for the children who reached up to her on its steps like newly hatched birds. The roster of 28 April 1923 counted 350 children there, and Near East Relief counted 389 by the end of the year. Nellie Miller spent a holiday there in May 1923. She kneels in the garden beside the house with three of the children, all in gingham. Every afternoon after school, Jacobsen took a few of them there to play among the flowers and help water the plants.

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

    Source note: The photograph appears on p. 202, within the diary of Miller's stay at the Birds' Nest that opened on May 20, 1923; the year follows that placement, as nothing is written on the print. A visitor to the orphanage on May 22 was "glad to see the children dressed in bright gingham," and wondered "why it was necessary for orphans to dress in dull drabs."

    Sources for the Item Detail

    • Published caption in Letters from Syria: "Nellie with children in the garden."

    • Near East Relief, Report to Congress for 1923 (New York, 1924), p. 24: "The 'Bird's Nest' at Sidon nestles 389 'birdies.'" https://archive.org/details/neareastreliefre0000vari_k1g6

    • Karekin Dickran, "Maria Jacobsen and the Genocide in Armenia," Danish Peace Academy, for the move from Zouk Michail to Sidon on 1 May 1923 and for the naming of the house. https://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/karekin/ukmaria.htm

    • Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon, s.v. "Maria Jacobsen," for her dates, her training as a nurse and her work for Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere. https://kvindebiografiskleksikon.lex.dk/Maria_Jacobsen

    • 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 crouches with three children. Sidon, c. 1923.