George E. White (missionary)


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.

Early life

On October 14, 1861, George Edward White was born in Marash, Ottoman Empire where his Christian missionary parents had arrived in 1856. He then traveled to the United States to attend Iowa College in Grinnell, Iowa and marry. Deciding upon a pastoral career, White then attended the Hartford Theological Seminary during the Russo-Turkish War and continued his education at Oxford University in England. Upon returning to Iowa, he received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Grinnell College.
For three years, George E. White served as pastor of a local Congregational church in Waverly, Iowa.

Missionary career

White began his missionary career in 1890. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent him to Merzifon in the Ottoman Empire as treasurer and dean of the Anatolia College in Merzifon. Anatolia College had opened in 1887 after incorporation under Massachusetts law.
White was promoted to the college's president in September 1913. The College's faculty then consisted of 11 Armenians, 10 Americans, and 9 Greeks. By World War I, 2,000 students had graduated from the College. White stated that the "Armenians have furnished the larger part of the students hitherto and the constituency is not merely local."

Background

Armenian Christians had been an oppressed minority in the Ottoman Empire, often turning to Protestant missionaries as well as Eastern Orthodox Russia for protection. Russian troops had been stationed in several Eastern Ottoman Provinces after the treaty ending the Russo-Turkish war, pending the Ottoman Empire's adoption of reforms, even as modified by the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Armenian nationalists rioted in Constantinople and in the provinces shortly after White's arrival in Merzifon, and were brutally suppressed in the Hamidian Massacres of 1894-1896. Ottoman military officers, including Mustafa Kemal Atatürk seized power from Sultan Abdülhamid II and attempted to establish a constitutional monarchy in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.
The collapsing Ottoman Empire lost its Balkan possessions after Orthodox Christian uprisings in the First Balkan War of 1912–13. As White's college presidency began, at least half a million Muslim Ottomans from the Empire's former Balkan possessions sought refuge in Turkey, some seeking revenge against Christians. Muslim Balkan refugees intensified Turkish fears that the Empire's Armenian Christian minority—with the assistance or encouragement of Western governments—might also attempt to establish an independent state and thus break up the Empire's Eastern provinces.

Armenian Genocide

White considered the demographic situation as an "internal breach that would come to surface as a deadly wound." He predicted that since many Christians lived in the area, conflict would be inevitable, merely awaiting an opportune time and conditions.
When the Turkish government began deporting Armenians in 1915, White remained in Merzifon. At the time, half the city's 30,000 people were Armenian. By spring, "the situation for Armenia, became excessively acute", White stated "the Turks determined to eliminate the Armenian question by eliminating the Armenians." White found "the misery, the agony, the suffering beyond power of words to express, almost beyond the power of hearts to conceive. In bereavement, thirst, hunger, loneliness, hopelessness, the groups were swept on and on along roads which had no destination." White, estimated 11,500 deportees, or almost half Merzifon's population. White also estimated that 1,200 Armenians converted to Islam to evade deportations and save their lives.
On August 19, Turkish authorities visited the Anatolian colleges and demanded deportation of all Armenian students and teachers. White "refused to tell" where Armenians were hiding so as to save them from getting deported or killed. However, the officials threatened to execute the College staff if the Armenians weren't handed over. White then agreed to hand the Armenians over and then held a prayer service for the deportees sent with the Turkish officials. The Armenian males were then separated from the women and shot outside of the city. The women were deported to the Syrian desert, and none ever returned. White later remarked, "thousands of women and children were swept away. Where? Nowhere. No destination was stated or intended. Why? Simply because they were Armenians and Christians and were in the hands of the Turks."
White later described the events in a New York Times article:
In the same article, he claimed that girls were sold in the market for "$2 to $4 each." White claimed he had personally ransomed "three girls at the price of $4.40".
White also provided a detailed account of the confiscated Armenian properties during the upheaval:
Afterward, White headed a 250-person expedition funded by the Near East Relief Fund to aid Armenian refugees. White also supported an independent Armenia because he believed that without a free Armenia, Armenians would have "no real security for the life of a man, the honor of a woman, the welfare of a child, the prosperity of a citizen or the rights of a father."
On 16 May 1916, Turkish authorities closed the college, displacing White and the remaining staff in order to establish a military hospital. The staff of the College was eventually transported to Constantinople. The College remained a military hospital for the next two years.

Return to Merzifon

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:
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.

Later life

After a total of forty-three years of missionary service, White retired in 1934 and returned to the United States.
On 27 April 1946, George E. White died in his home, 287 4th Avenue, Claremont, California at the age of 84. His body was transferred to Iowa where he was buried with his parents at Hazelwood Cemetery in Grinnell.