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The Mid-Week Pictorial reports Lester Wright’s death and the orphan march. 1922.
Location
Harpoot (Kharpert), Turkey
Year
1922
Item Detail
The New York Times printed Wright's portrait three weeks after he was shot, alongside a photograph supplied by Near East Relief of children walking five hundred miles out of Harpoot into Syria. The article adds a detail the rest of the collection does not carry, that Wright had been a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Enoch R. Applegate of Jersey City appears in the second portrait. The killing reached American readers in the same issue that reported the Nationalist advance on Constantinople and the abolition of the Sultanate.
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
Printed caption, across the spread: "Part of the 5,000 orphans who marched 500 miles overland from the Near East Orphanage in Harpoot, Turkish Armenia, on their way out of Nationalist Turkey to safety in Syria."
Printed roundel caption: "LESTER JAMES WRIGHT. American Near East Relief worker who was killed by bandits near Aleppo."
Printed roundel caption: "ENOCH R. APPLEGATE. Worker for the Near East Relief who was wounded at the same time that Wright was killed."
Printed in the article: "one of whom, Lester James Wright, formerly professor in the University of Wisconsin, was killed by bandits in the vicinity of Aleppo. Another American, Enoch R. Applegate of Jersey City, N. J., was wounded in the same attack, but escaped with his life."
Photo credit: "(Photos courtesy Near East Relief.)"
The third scan carries no caption and the coffin in it is not identified.
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Sworn statement of Dr. C. Stanley G. Mylrea before J. B. Jackson, U.S. Consul at Aleppo, 31 October 1922. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Bayard Dodge to Mrs. Wright, 31 October 1922, recording the burial at Beirut. 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 scans. Two are the facing pages of a spread from the New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, 16 November 1922, headed "Flight of Orphan Host From Turkish Persecution; Menacing Developments in the Near Eastern Crisis," with the credit "(Photos courtesy Near East Relief.)" A photograph across both pages shows a column of children and animals in open country, captioned as part of the 5,000 orphans who marched 500 miles overland from the Near East Orphanage in Harpoot, Turkish Armenia. A roundel on the first page carries a portrait of Lester James Wright and a roundel on the second carries Enoch R. Applegate. The article describes the march south to Syria and surveys the Near Eastern crisis of autumn 1922, including Smyrna, the Chanak zone, the Mudania conference, the Lausanne conference called for November, and the abolition of the Sultanate at Angora on 1 November. The third scan is a separate uncaptioned photographic print showing two women beside a coffin draped with the United States flag in a bare interior.