page_title: George E. White (missionary)
section_title: Return to Merzifon
hierarchical_section_title: George E. White (missionary) / Missionary career / Return to Merzifon
caption_attribution_description: English: Orphanages - Merzifon (Turkey) Armenian Orphans 1918 After the end of World War I, Anatolia College sheltered 2,000 orphans.
context_page_description: George Edward White was an American Congregationalist missionary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for forty-three years. Stationed in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide as President of the Anatolia College in Merzifon, White attempted to save the lives of many Armenians, including "refused to tell" where Armenians were hiding so to save them from getting deported or killed. Thus he became an important witness to the Armenian Genocide.
context_section_description: George E. White returned to the Ottoman Empire and the College's presidency, reopening in 1919. However, many Armenian teachers and staff had been killed, and the buildings damaged and deteriorated during the military occupation. Nonetheless, White immediately began providing relief to victims of the Genocide. He described the relief efforts and the College:
  Inquiries are already being made by all races as to when our College will open. For the present we must press the relief work, but by fall we hope to take up also the school work. We shall need several first-class American tutors. You will remember that eight of our Armenian teachers were killed by the Turks. Everywhere girls are coming back who were carried away and forcibly married to Turks. Two of our Marsovan schoolgirls were taken into the homes of Turks in Marsovan. They ran away together and got to Constantinople in some way. I saw in one orphanage of this sort a few days ago thirty girls. They expect to have seventy-five. They have sad stories to tell. Most of those who had had babies have left them in the Turkish homes. I heard of one of our Marsovan girls, married to an Arab, who might come back now; but her face had been tattooed in such a way that she was ashamed to show it among people who had known her. The poor mistreated girls! How shall we bring new hope, new life, to them?
  White helped establish various additions to the campus which included an agriculture section. By 1919, an orphanage was established within the premises of the school which sheltered as many as 2,000 Armenian orphans. In addition, a "baby house" was established to house Armenian girls and babies displaced by the Genocide.
  However, the Turkish government in 1921 ordered the Anatolian College in Merzifon closed. The College ultimately relocated to Salonika, Greece. In 1924, George White was appointed president of the as-yet-unconstructed Salonika branch. He later described that upon his arrival, the building was "without a book, a bell or a bench." White raised funds to construct and operate the new College.
caption: Armenian orphans of the Marsovan Anatolian College in 1918
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