Fred and Carrie Midgley Photographs (1926–1928)

Fred and Carrie Midgley served as Near East Relief workers at the island orphanage on Syra (present-day Syros) in Greece from approximately 1926 to 1928. Fred trained boys in farming, agriculture, and animal husbandry, while Carrie contributed to education and recreation programs. The Syra orphanage complex, one of NER’s largest facilities in Greece, housed more than a thousand children — primarily Armenian and Greek children orphaned or displaced by the genocides — in a self-sustaining community that combined schooling, vocational training, and organized recreation.

The Midgley photographs are the loose prints kept with the family’s papers, apart from the bound scrapbook. They include portraits of individual orphans and relief workers, views of the orphanage buildings, the farm, and the harbor town of Hermoupolis, and scenes of farm work, schooling, and recreation, including the 1928 distribution of American “St. Louis” dolls to Armenian orphans. Many prints are inscribed on the back with handwritten names, dates, and notes that identify particular children and staff — the garden boy known as “Charlie,” the sisters Suzanne and Sevart, the relief worker David Hoagland. Where the scrapbook shows the institution and how the Midgleys’ work reached audiences at home, the photographs bring its individual children and workers into focus.

The Midgley papers were given to the Near East Foundation by their granddaughter, Nancy Winter Taylor, and are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center.