Collections
The Ismid unit sails down the Bosphorus. Constantinople, June 1922.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1922
Item Detail
Near East Relief ran an orphanage, a hospital and refugee relief at Ismid, the ancient Nicomedia at the head of the gulf, and Harry C. Moffett directed the unit there from the spring of 1921 until June 1922. Moffett posted the card to his mother in Ohio on 13 June 1922, the day the unit came down the Bosphorus. The children were living in one of Sultan Hamid's palaces and safe, the work was successfully completed and with all honors, and after eighteen months of trouble and worry he was free. Two hundred and seventy orphan girls made the passage on the S.S. Odessa with him and Dorothy Sutton.
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.
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Holding Institution
Little Traverse History Museum
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Attribution
Little Traverse History Museum. Harry C. Moffett Collection.
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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].
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Notes
Inscribed on the back: "MESSAGE (written sideways on the left half): June 13/22 We sailed down the / Bosphore with all Ismid / Unit on board, leaving be- / hind the Kemalist Govern- / ment. The children are now / living in one of Sultan Hamids / palaces and safe. My work has / been successfully completed / and with all honors. After 18 / months of trouble and worry I / am free. Hurrah. Harry. || ADDRESS: Mrs Alice Moffett / Lebanon, Ohio / United States / America" On the front: "33 CONSTANTINOPLE. Bosphore (Tours de Roumeli-Hissar)"
Sources for the Item Detail:
• Near East Relief [staff newsletter], vol. 4 (1922), scan p. 70, on the move of 270 orphan girls from Ismid to Yenikeuy aboard the S.S. Odessa, 13 June 1922. https://archive.org/details/ldpd_12070546_004
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.