The beach orphanage staff pose by a cactus hedge. Sidon, 1922.
Location
Sidon (Saida), Lebanon
Year
1922
Item Detail
The beach orphanage at Sidon was a temporary establishment on the shore, separate from the mission campus in the hills at Miamia. It housed girls, who worked its garden and ate in the dining shed. Its staff pose in two rows before a prickly-pear hedge, women in the great majority, with two men in uniform and peaked caps standing at the back.
Context
Bayard Dodge (1888–1972) taught at the Syrian Protestant College, later the American University of Beirut, and was its president from 1923 to 1948. The son of Near East Relief's treasurer, he helped build the network of orphanages that received Armenian children moved south out of Anatolia, and in April 1921 he secured French assurances that 1,000 children from Marash and 700 from Urfa could enter Syria.
The album records that movement and its aftermath through 1921 and 1922: the refugee camp at Alexandretta, the convoys out of Marash, the sailing of 1,500 Harpout orphans to Constantinople in September 1922, and the orphanages at Aleppo, Antilyas, Jebail, Nahr Ibrahim, Sidon, Miamia, Ghazir and Shemlan. A December 1922 count puts some 10,740 children in the Beirut-area institutions. Most were survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
Bayard Dodge Photograph Albums, Volume IV, American University of Beirut, Archives and Special Collections; digital surrogate by the Near East Foundation.
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. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].
