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A Single Thread, Part One: Textiles in the Near East
In the Ottoman Empire, an Armenian family might raise its own silkworms and work the silk into a carpet or garment whose deep reds and golds marked it as Armenian. Textiles like these carried heritage and identity from one generation...
“To Be Thrown Out Into the World”: The Nellie Miller Mann Collection
A Mennonite relief worker’s account of the children at NER’s Beirut headquarters and the orphanages along the Lebanese coast, drawn from letters and photos she sent home between 1921 and 1923.
Citizen Philanthropy: Say It With Flour!
In the early 1920s, Syracuse grocers might invite a customer paying for groceries to drop a measure of flour — or a silver dollar — into a barrel beside the counter. The donation would travel by railcar to the Black...
Susan B. Anthony’s Nieces
Among the relief workers who sailed for the Near East in the first months of 1919 were two sisters from Berkeley, California: Gertrude Anthony, a 46-year-old teacher of biology and botany, and her sister Amy, a 50-year-old trained nurse. They...