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Nellie Miller helps embark 1,500 Harpoot children at Beirut. September 1922.
Location
Beirut, Lebanon
Year
1922
Item Detail
Miller was up at half past three on 15 September 1922 and wrote this at midnight the same day. The children had come out of Harpoot over the preceding weeks and were leaving for Constantinople aboard the chartered steamer Marie Lucile. Boys walked into Beirut down the railroad track in groups of three hundred and two hundred and fifty, and bedding and children went out to the ship on lighters. Miller and Miss Stancliffe had spent the previous week of evenings preparing the passports and lists for all 1,500. Baidzar Bakkalian, a teacher from Harpoot, traveled with them.
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, one of two Mennonite women it sent to the Near East in these years. 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.
The collection holds her letters to her family and to her fiancé Cleo Mann, her appointment papers and contract, and the Near East Relief reports, rosters and field accounts she kept. Together they document the Beirut office through the movement of orphans out of Anatolia and Cilicia into Syria and Lebanon in 1922, the Greek deportations of the following winter, and the deaths of two NER workers, Menno Shellenberger at Diarbekir and Lester James Wright on the Aleppo road. David W. Mann published his mother's writings as Letters from Syria, 1921–1923 (2013) and gave the originals to the Near East Foundation.
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Holding Institution
Rockefeller Archive Center
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External Link
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Attribution
Rockefeller Archive Center. Near East Foundation records, FA406. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14.
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Rights
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Notes
Typed in the letter: "This morning I got up at 3:30 and went with Mr. King out to the Harpoot Camp where we have over 1500 children just lately come out from Harpoot. The special chartered steamer, Marie Lucile, has come from Constantinople and is starting off this afternoon with 1500 Harpootlies." / "Miss Stancliffe and I have been working evenings for the last week to get passports and lists ready for these 1500 children." / "I was talking with Baidzar Bakkalian, one of the young teachers from Harpoot, who has become a good friend of mine ... She said, “I do not see how we can ever be grateful enough. You people leave your homes and come out here and take care of us just as if you cared. ... We used to eat eight okes of pilav and then wait to die.”"
Signed in ink: "Nellie."
Marked in pencil in a later hand on page 2: "three shakes" struck, with "a short time" written in the margin, and a paragraph beginning "Of course, there are exceptions among these Armenians" struck through.
Sources for the Item Detail:
• "A Flight of Children," The New Near East, November 1922, pp. 14–15 ("From Harpoot alone five thousand children have been brought out"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, sheet I, which lists Roy J. King as Director of Transportation & Supply and J. H. Knudsen at Antilyas Seaside. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
About this group
• Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Near East Foundation records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief appointment certificate, 20 August 1921, signed C. V. Vickrey and C. M. Fowle ("Miss Nellie M. Miller has been duly appointed a member of the relief expedition"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, sheet I ("Secretary to Treasurer & in charge of Individual Remittance Dept. — Miss Nellie M. Miller"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Nellie Miller Mann, Letters from Syria, 1921–1923, transcribed and edited by David W. Mann (Morgantown, Pa.: Masthof Press, 2013).
• Rockefeller Archive Center finding aid, Near East Foundation records: https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib
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Document Contents
Three-page typed letter on Near East Relief / Succeeding the American Red Cross Beirut letterhead, dated 15 September 1922 at 12 a.m., addressed "Dear folks" and signed in ink "Nellie." She describes going out to the Harpoot Camp with Mr. King before dawn, taking coffee to Mr. Knudsen who had stayed overnight, and watching three hundred boys set off on foot down the railroad track toward Beirut, followed by a second group of two hundred and fifty. She describes the camp with its stream running through the middle, the loading of bedding and children onto lighters at the port, and the chartered steamer Marie Lucile lying out in the harbor. She records that she and Miss Stancliffe had worked evenings for a week preparing passports and lists for the 1,500 children, quotes the Harpoot teacher Baidzar Bakkalian on Near East Relief, and closes with family news. Passages on page two are struck through in pencil in a later hand, marking cuts for publication.