Boats load 5,500 refugees onto the transport. Stamboul, 1923.

Location

Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey

Year

1923

Item Detail

Refugees carried out of the Black Sea in 1923 were landed at the quarantine camp on the island of Makronisi, where Esther Lovejoy saw Moffett with the people he had brought from the Pontus. Moffett was in charge of the ship. Typhus and smallpox raged aboard, many died and were cast into the sea, and the passage took twenty-one days with 5,500 refugees on board.

Context

Harry Clement Moffett (1879–1950) served with Near East Relief from February 1921 to May 1924, after serving with the YMCA in France and Poland. In spring 1921, NER made him director of its unit at Ismid (Izmit), where he stayed through the Greek army's withdrawal that June. In June 1922 he moved 270 orphan girls from Ismid to Constantinople (Istanbul). From August, he ran the orphanage work at Sivas, and that winter he sent its children by wagon convoy over the mountains to Samsoun (Samsun), a twelve-day journey on which, he wrote, many died. In 1923, he escorted orphans and refugees to Greece, once aboard a transport on which typhus and smallpox broke out.

The collection holds the first 114 photographs and postcards shared by the Little Traverse Museum in Petoskey, Michigan, where Moffett later lived. Most carry his own captions on the back. They show the Ismid orphanage and hospital, Armenian girls whom NER recovered from Arab households after the Armenian Genocide, the Sivas convoys, and children NER housed at Athens, Syra (Syros), and Edipsos (Aidipsos). Smaller groups cover his YMCA years and a 1924 visit to Jerusalem.

View in the Digital Archive

  • Holding Institution

    Little Traverse History Museum

  • Attribution

    Little Traverse History Museum. Harry C. Moffett Collection.

  • Rights

    No known copyright restrictions. Based on available information, NERHS is not aware of copyright restrictions on this material. Items are presented for non-commercial research and educational use. Users are responsible for determining rights status and compliance with applicable law. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].

  • Notes

    Inscribed on the back: "Stamboul Turkey 1923. loadin[g] / the refugee transport S.S. Ion[... cut off] / with ^5500 refugees. This is the ship / on which typhus & small pox / raged and many died and / were cast into the sea, in the / next 21 days before we dis- / charged our passengers at the / isolation camp on Macronesi / island Greece. H C Moffett in charge."

    Sources for the Item Detail:

    • Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans (1927), pp. 295, 299, placing Moffett with refugees from the Black Sea at the Makronisi quarantine camp. https://archive.org/details/certainsamaritan0000esth

    About this group: Harry C. Moffett Collection, Little Traverse History Museum, Petoskey, Michigan. The museum holds the original photographs and supplied digital surrogates to the Near East Relief Historical Society by deed of gift in September 2026.

    Sources for the Context:

    • Near East Relief staff newsletter, vol. 3 (1921) and vol. 4 (1922), Columbia University Libraries via the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ldpd_12070546_003 and https://archive.org/details/ldpd_12070546_004.

    • Team Work (Near East Relief), vol. 3, no. 6, 13 June 1924, p. 24.

    • James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1930), Overseas Personnel, p. 451, HathiTrust: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b744679.

    • Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans (1927), pp. 295, 299: https://archive.org/details/certainsamaritan0000esth.

Boats load 5,500 refugees onto the transport. Stamboul, 1923.