The Mennonite Relief Commission party poses before sailing for Beirut. New York, 1921.
Location
New York, United States
Year
1921
Item Detail
The Mennonite Relief Commission seconded six workers to Near East Relief in 1921. Nellie Miller traveled from Elkhart, Indiana, and met the party at the Near East Relief office in New York on 20 August 1921, where she signed a two-year contract. They sailed that afternoon on the French liner S.S. Patria and reached Beirut on 20 September. Miller stands front center with Menno Shellenberger, Roy King, Joe Detweiler, John Detweiler, and Herman Kreider. She served as secretary to the treasurer at the Beirut headquarters until 1923. Shellenberger died of smallpox on 14 December 1921.
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.
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Album card: “Mennonite workers leaving / for Beirut 1921.”
The names come from the Nellie Miller Mann collection, where the same photograph is captioned: “Nellie Miller (front center) with the Mennonite Relief Commission delegation departing for Beirut: Menno Shellenberger, Roy King, Joe and John Detweiler, and Herman Kreider. August 1921.”
The NMM caption dates the departure to August 1921. The Mennonite personnel list in Letters from Syria, 1921-1923, p. 237, gives July 1921 for all six.
