Barclay Acheson Photographs (1922–1928)

Barclay Acheson (1886–1957), an ordained Presbyterian minister, became Associate General Secretary of Near East Relief in 1922 and spent that summer visiting orphanages and relief stations across the Near East. In 1923 he took charge of all relief work in Greece, Syria, and the Caucasus, working from Athens during the Greek-Turkish population exchange that followed the destruction of Smyrna (Izmir). By 1925 he was Director of Overseas Operations, and that November he drew up an emergency plan to evacuate the 45,000 orphans and refugees in NER’s care in Syria as political revolt spread through the region. Acheson carried a camera through these years and built a personal photographic record of the field operations he supervised between roughly 1922 and 1928.

This selection documents NER orphan care and refugee relief across the organization’s main theaters. At Alexandropol (Gyumri) in the Caucasus — the largest orphanage complex NER operated — Armenian children orphaned by the genocide work the garden plots, pose before the mud-walled barracks that housed them, and gather with their nurses. At Ghazir, in present-day Lebanon, orphan girls display the rugs they wove in the workshops that produced the celebrated Ghazir orphan rug. In Athens, children show their rug work at the Zappeion exhibition hall, attended by Sara Corning and Henry Morgenthau. Other frames place Acheson himself among children in the street, refugees at rail stations, and relief workers, including Harold C. Jaquith. Acheson’s field diaries are presented in a companion collection.

The Barclay Acheson photographs are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center, within the Near East Foundation Records.