Collections
Description of NER Personnel House, Beirut 1921
Location
Beirut, Lebanon
Year
1921
Item Detail
Letter from Nellie Miller describing the NER personnel house in Beirut, October 1921
Context
Nellie Marie Miller Mann (1897–1997) was a Mennonite volunteer from Elkhart, Indiana, who served as secretary to the treasurer of Near East Relief headquarters in Beirut from 1921 to 1923.
A graduate of Goshen College and member of Prairie Street Mennonite Church, she was one of only two Mennonite women to serve in the Near East through the Mennonite Relief Commission during this period. From her desk in the Beirut office, Mann processed correspondence and financial records while the organization managed the evacuation of tens of thousands of Armenian orphans from Cilicia into Syria. She witnessed the Smyrna disaster refugee crisis of 1922 and the murder of NER worker Lester James Wright by bandits near Aleppo.
The collection includes personal and official correspondence, NER administrative reports, field accounts of relief operations in Syria and Cilicia, and documents related to the deaths of NER workers Lester James Wright and Menno Shellenberger. Mann’s letters to her family and fiancé Cleo Mann provide a rare firsthand account of daily life at NER headquarters during one of the organization’s most intense operational periods.
David W. Mann published his mother’s writings in Letters from Syria, 1921–1923 (2013) and donated the original materials 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
Nellie Miller Mann Series (Series 14), Near East Foundation Records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center. Courtesy of David Mann.
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Rights
Some materials may be protected by U.S. copyright law. Materials are presented for non-commercial research and educational use under fair use. Uses beyond fair use may require permission from the copyright owner. Responsibility for rights determination and compliance rests with the user.
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Notes
Five-page handwritten letter by Nellie Miller (later Mann) on Near East Relief / American Red Cross Beirut letterhead, numbered pages 3 through 7, describing her new lodgings at the NER Personnel House on a hill above the Mediterranean with sweeping balcony views toward the Lebanon mountains and the Sannin peak at sunset. She sketches a rough floor plan of the main floor (a carriage shop and oriental pharmacy below the entry; living room, 36-by-20-foot dining room with marble floor, three-sided sun porch, kitchen, and servants’ apartments) and describes the dining etiquette under treasurer Mr. McAlpin (her boss) and hostess Mrs. Bender, her room arrangement after rooming with Miss White, and her gratitude for English-language Sunday services held in the house. Nellie notes the heavy iron gate locked nightly with the servant boy sleeping just off the first landing, the iron bars on windows as a wartime precaution, a wealthy Moslem family on the third floor, and a Victrola the boys keep going for a homelike feel. The letter is intimate and domestic, valuable for documenting NER personnel housing conditions in 1921–1922.
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Document Contents
Five-page handwritten letter by Nellie Miller (later Mann), numbered pages 3 through 7, on Near East Relief / American Red Cross Beirut letterhead, describing the NER Personnel House on a hill above the Mediterranean with a long balcony view toward the Lebanon mountains and the Sannin peak. She inventories the house: a carriage shop and oriental pharmacy on the ground floor, the NER residence above with triple-windowed living room (a worn upright piano and a Victrola), a 36-by-20-foot dining room with marble floor, three rooms off either side of the dining room, a kitchen and servants’ apartments behind, and individual bedrooms upstairs (she has just moved out of a shared room with Miss White). The dining room is presided over by Mr. and Mrs. Bender — Ray Bender at the head of the table, Mrs. Bender as hostess — while treasurer Mr. McAlpin, for whom Nellie serves as secretary, hosts the regular dinner courses. Nellie notes the heavy iron gate locked nightly with the servant boy sleeping just off the first landing, the iron bars on windows as a wartime carryover, a wealthy Moslem family on the third floor, and her first church service “since August 14” at one of the now-resumed Sunday-evening English services held in the house.