Doolittle report on the death of Menno Shellenberger
View Full Document

Location

Aleppo, Syria

Year

1922

Item Detail

Report on the death of Menno Shellenberger, NER worker, by George C. Doolittle, March 1922

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.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    Rockefeller Archive Center

  • External Link
    https://dimes.rockarch.org/collections/Ahi2i3M7wcFTbQuXZgxDib

  • Attribution

    Nellie Miller Mann Series (Series 14), Near East Foundation Records (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center. Courtesy of David Mann.

  • 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.

  • Notes

    Reproduced in Letters from Syria appendix, pp. 260–261.

    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.

  • Document Contents

    Memorial report from George C. Doolittle, Director of the NER Aleppo Unit, dated Aleppo, March 1, 1922, describing the December 1921 death of Mennonite relief worker Menno Shellenberger at Diarbekir of smallpox initially misdiagnosed as typhus and then as measles. Barely twenty-three years old and just out of his sophomore year at Hesston College, Kansas, Shellenberger had been posted to Urfa and was traveling with Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Detweiler when he fell ill on arrival at Diarbekir on November 30; he had not been vaccinated, having declined for fear a sore arm would interfere with his driving the relief car. He died at five o’clock on the evening of December 14 of edema of the epiglottis and heart weakness. Doolittle quotes letters from Mary Caroline Holmes of the Urfa Unit and from Dr. Jacob Kunzler, who rode by horseback from Urfa — three hours to a village to spend the night, then a thirteen-hour ride the next day — to nurse Shellenberger through his final days and conduct the funeral on December 15.

Doolittle report on the death of Menno Shellenberger