Mary Harin Jaquith

Mary Harin Jaquith, the wife of H.C. Jaquith, was also a prominent figure in the Near East Relief.

H.C. Jaquith held a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College, a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a doctorate of divinity from Union Theological Seminary. Jaquith began his career as the assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1912. Five years later he was named assistant secretary to Near East Relief. He toured the Near East in 1919 as leader of the Sunday School Commission and made a preliminary assessment of needs.

In 1921, Jaquith became Managing Director of NER in Constantinople. He oversaw operations for 180,000 orphans and refugees in the Constantinople area. Jaquith’s impassioned cablegrams from the field painted a horrific picture of the on-going refugee situation. His accounts of the plight of refugees after the burning of Smyrna in September 1922 were particularly chilling. Jaquith wrote that the Turkish Nationalist army was taking advantage of the chaos to conduct additional deportations. His eloquent articles and pleas for aid were frequently published in The New Near East magazine and national news outlets.

In 1923, Jaquith was appointed to help oversee the resettlement of approximately 400,000 ethnic Turks from Greece as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey brought on by the Smyrna disaster. He negotiated the safe release of thousands of prisoners of the Greco-Turkish War. Both governments decorated Jaquith for his work.

Jaquith met Marie Harin at the NER office in Constantinople. A native of Russia, she grew up speaking Russian, French, and English. Her family fled Yalta in 1920. When Harin’s parents moved on to Yugoslavia, she chose to remain in Constantinople, where she worked as a NER interpreter and adopted the name “Mary.” The couple was married in Yugoslavia in November 1925 and made their home in Constantinople.

H.C. Jaquith became the NER Associate General Secretary in 1927. He was instrumental in overseeing the transition from Near East Relief to the Near East Foundation. The family moved to New York City in 1929. Harold Jaquith served as an executive officer with NEF from 1930 to 1933, when he left to pursue a career in higher education administration. He died in April 1943 at the age of 54.

Mary Jaquith spent the War years working for the FBI in New Haven, Connecticut, where her language skills were put to good use. She went on to teach French and Russian at the high school and college levels. In 1946, she became one of the United Nations’ first simultaneous interpreters. She retired from full-time interpreting at the age of 60 but continued to work on a freelance basis until age 82. Mary Jaquith died in 1985 at the age of 87.

See more details