Collections
Hovhannes Kouyoumdjian writes the history of 79 NER orphans. Antilyas, 1922.
Location
Antilyas, Lebanon
Year
1922
Item Detail
Seventy-nine boys came from Tarsus to Mersine on 27 December 1921, as the Christian population left the city and no one would take charge of them. They were mixed in with the Armenian Orphanage party to get them past the French military and aboard the last free steamer on 28 December, which carried sixteen hundred more people and ran out of food on the way. They lay in Beirut harbor on the night of 29 December and landed the next day, when McAfee placed them in a new orphanage. Kouyoumdjian traveled with them and wrote this ten weeks later at Antilyas, in his own English.
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 document, with the author’s spelling: "At last Syrian gates were opened for this poor people and by and by Mersine became a city without Christian." / "Last plan was to mix these boys with Armenian Orphans, in order to get them out board the steamer without being prevented from entering the steamer by the French Military." / "One of the 79 began to say. Now we have no parants, no money. We have not a single man that sympathize with us ... But we had N.E.R. for all of them. N.E.R. has been parants of us, up to this time. But now they also left us in the half way." / "A minute later a third one said, “Boys come let us pray for this, and then go to sleep. And they did"
Signed: "Hovhannes Kouyoumdjian. Antilyas 7-3-22"
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Clinton W. Crow, Director N.E.R. Mersine, to the Managing Director at Constantinople, 24 July 1923, on the second Mersine evacuation. Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• "A Flight of Children," The New Near East, November 1922, pp. 14–15, naming Howard McAfee as managing director of the Beirut area. 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
Two-page typescript headed "The History of 79 N.E.R. Orphans" and subtitled "One interesting page from my memorandum book," signed Hovhannes Kouyoumdjian at Antilyas and dated 7 March 1922. Kouyoumdjian describes the position of seventy-nine Near East Relief orphans at Mersine in December 1921, who had come from Tarsus on 27 December and whom nobody would claim as the Christian population left the city. He records the plan to mix them with the Armenian orphanage party so they could board without being stopped by the French military, the embarkation on 28 December, the sixteen hundred further refugees crowded aboard, the failure of the food arrangements and his approach to the captain, and the voyage to Beirut. He recounts the boys talking on deck in Beirut harbor on the night of 29 December about whether Near East Relief would still help them, and ends with their reception the next day by Mr. McAfee, Managing Director of the N.E.R. Committee Syria and Aleppo District, who placed them in a new orphanage. Byron Noone, Miss Webb and Mr. Khamkian are named as having helped at Mersine.