Edwin M. Bulkley

Edwin Muhlenberg Bulkley was a New York investment banker, a partner in Spencer Trask & Co., who gave Near East Relief two decades of financial and executive leadership. A member of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, he served as Treasurer of the Persian Relief Committee, one of the bodies whose work merged into the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. He stood among the founders of the relief committee and appears in the photograph taken on Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s return from Constantinople (Istanbul) in January 1916, beside Cleveland H. Dodge, James L. Barton, and Charles V. Vickrey. The Act of Congress approved on August 6, 1919, named him among the trustees who incorporated Near East Relief and among the men authorized to convene its first meeting.

He went on to chair the organization’s Executive Committee, succeeding Alexander J. Hemphill, and he sat on the conservation committee that planned the transition from emergency relief to long-term work. When Near East Relief reorganized as the Near East Foundation in 1930, Bulkley served as chairman of its executive committee. His work for the cause was financial and in its governance, rather than in the field.