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Doolittle reports the death of Menno Shellenberger at Diarbekir. Aleppo, 1922.
Location
Aleppo, Syria
Year
1922
Item Detail
Shellenberger was a Mennonite from Hesston College, Kansas, not quite twenty-three, who had waited at Aleppo nearly two months for transfer to Urfa. He left Urfa for Diarbekir on 29 November 1921 and was ill by the next noon. Five physicians called it typhus, then measles. Jacob Kunzler rode sixteen hours from Urfa and identified smallpox on arrival. Shellenberger died on 14 December 1921 and was buried the following morning. Mary Caroline Holmes wrote that he had declined vaccination because a sore arm would interfere with driving the car.
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 notice: "This promising young man, hardly twenty-three years of age, had finished the Sophomore year in Hesston College, Kansas, and had then joined the Near East Relief."
Quoted from Mary Caroline Holmes: "The thing to regret is that someone, somewhere, did not see to it that he was vaccinated. I wanted him to be vaccinated here, but he thought that a sore arm would interfere with his running the car, and he said – “When I return, I will have it done!”"
Quoted from Jacob Kunzler: "On my arrival, I knew at once that it was smallpox." / "The funeral took place the following morning, December 15th, I conducting the service."
Written in ink beside the second extract: "Kunzler (Swiss Missionary Dr.)"
The dateline reads "ALEPPO 3/1/22" and supports either 3 January or 1 March 1922.
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Charles V. Vickrey to Major General James G. Harbord, 4 March 1922 ("as you may perhaps judge by the enclosed clipping concerning one of them who volunteered for a dangerous post in the interior, at Diarbekir, and recently gave his life"). Nellie Miller-Mann, Series 14, Rockefeller Archive Center.
• Near East Relief, Syria-Palestine Area, Organization and Personnel, 28 April 1923, sheet II, "Ghazir — Dr. & Mrs. Kunzler." 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 typed circular notice headed "DEATH OF MR. MENNO SHELLENBERGER," datelined "ALEPPO 3/1/22" and signed in type by George C. Doolittle, Director, Aleppo Unit. Doolittle gives Shellenberger's age, his sophomore year at Hesston College in Kansas, and his two months at Aleppo awaiting transfer to Urfa, and records the sympathy of the Aleppo personnel. He then quotes two letters in full. Mary Caroline Holmes of the Urfa Unit writes that Miss Kershner went from Mardin to nurse him, that Kunzler never left him, and that he had refused vaccination because a sore arm would interfere with his running the car. Jacob Kunzler describes the journey from Urfa on horseback after obtaining government permission, three hours to a village and thirteen more the next day, the earlier diagnoses of typhus and then measles by five physicians, his own identification of smallpox on arrival, the treatment given, the death at five in the evening of the fourteenth day from oedema of the epiglottis and heart weakness, and the funeral he conducted the following morning, 15 December. A marginal note in ink identifies Kunzler as a Swiss missionary doctor.