Annie T. Allen †

In the winter of 1921–1922, Annie T. Allen protested the treatment of Greek deportees to the governor at Harpoot (Harput), then died of typhus on her way back to Angora (Ankara).

The daughter of American Board missionaries, she was born at Harpoot in 1868, graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1890, and from 1903 taught at the girls’ school in Broussa (Bursa). She stayed in Turkey through the First World War and the Armenian Genocide.

In 1921, Near East Relief made her its first representative at Angora, the Turkish Nationalist capital. That April she secured from Mustafa Kemal guarantees of safety for Americans and freedom of travel for relief workers. In December the Nationalist government asked her to remove Forest D. Yowell, the director at Harpoot, for “interfering in political matters.” She went to Harpoot to investigate and reported that the complaint rested on a misunderstanding. While there, she raised with the governor what Yowell called “the unwarranted cruelty in the treatment of the Greek deportees,” whom officials would not let the relief workers help. The governor told her not to interfere in political matters.

She left Harpoot on January 21 and fell ill with typhus at Hekim Han. Snow had closed the mountain roads to vehicles, and for the last days she rode a pack animal, held in the saddle by two men. She reached Sivas about January 28 and died there on February 2, 1922, of heart failure from typhus. Turkish Nationalist authorities took the papers she carried, including her notes on the Harpoot case. Three weeks after her death, Yowell was ordered out of the country.