Carmelite Brewer Christie was a Congregational missionary in the Ottoman Empire from 1877 to 1920 and served as the acting president of the St. Paul's College, during World War I. She was the College's sole American caretaker, though her husband Thomas Davidson Christie was the named president. She wrote letters and kept diaries which are part of the Minnesota Historical Society Christie Collection and provide a first-hand account of the Armenian massacre of 1895, Ottoman Turkish politics in the pre- and post-World War I era, the Armenian genocide of 1915 and its aftermath. During the 1909 Riots and unrest, she refused to abandon the school, students and refugees who had fled there, guarding up to 5,000 people under her protection and hoisting the American flag.