Collections
McAfee and the Gannaways travel with Azardawi. Marash, 1922.
Location
Marash (Kahramanmaras), Turkey
Year
1922
Item Detail
Dr. Charles R. Gannaway served as a Near East Relief physician at Marash, where he treated a gravely ill child named Azadouhi, born at Zeitun in 1919. He and his wife Pearl brought her south with the 1922 convoys and later adopted her. Howard McAfee, the managing director for the Beirut area, traveled with them from Marash when the station closed. Six adults and the child rode in truck 310, with trunks lashed to the back, and the car covered 2,600 miles during the evacuation, with one stop for repairs. Near East Relief moved 3,000 children from Mardin, Urfa, Diarbekir, and Marash to Syria in 1922.
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.
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Holding Institution
American University of Beirut Archives and Special Collections
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Attribution
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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Rights
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Notes
Album card: “Spring 1922 / 3,000 children were moved to Syria from Mardin, Urfa, Diabekir, and Marash. / 1. Ready to move. / 2. Mr. McAfee, Dr. + Mrs. Gannaway + Azardawi moving from Marash. / 3. Mrs. Gannaway.” The name written “Azardawi” on the card is Azadouhi, later Zadi Margaret Gannaway Hale, born 25 November 1919 at Zeitun and adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Charles R. Gannaway.
The New Near East, November 1922, p. 15, published this photograph in the article “A Flight of Children,” captioned: “Dr. and Mrs. W. T. Gannaway, after closing the Marash station en route to Beirut with Director McAfee, holding their adopted daughter Azadoohi, in a car which did 2600 miles during the evacuation with only one stop for repairs.” The magazine confused father and son. The New York Times of 24 September 1921 lists “Dr. and Mrs. C. R. Ganaway, with their son, W. T. Ganaway, who are going to the Near East on relief work,” sailing on the Regina d'Italia. The September 1922 New Near East calls the son “Mr. W. T. Gannaway, Near East Relief worker at Marash.” Nellie Miller Mann's letters name three people throughout: the doctor, his wife, and their son Ted.