Dorothea Chambers Blaisdell

Missionary Daughter: Witness to the End of the Ottoman Empire Dorothea Chambers Blaisdell

The daughter of missionaries, Dorothea Chambers Blaisdell spent her childhood and early adult life in Adana, Turkey from 1900 to 1922. She witnessed the upheavals of revolutionary movements against the Ottoman Empire, the tumult in Turkey during the First World War, and the wrenching changes brought about by the establishment of the Turkish Republic. These were extraordinary times. In these memoirs, she sets these dramatic events against the warmth and intimacy of her missionary home, her girlhood friendships and dreams. We share her growth from a young girl, absorbed with her family and childhood activities, to a mature young woman of courage, charm and skill, fluently working among French, Armenian, Turkish, American and British societies as they struggled to realign their relations following the First World War. Throughout her story, one experiences two levels of existence, one the daily life of a close knit expatriate community, the other, the ever present threat of political, religious and sectarian strife.