Mary Louise Graffam

Mary Louise Graffam (May 11, 1871 – August 17, 1921) was an American teacher, high school principal, Christian missionary, and an important witness to the Armenian genocide.

She was raised in the Christian faith with her sister Winona. As a teenager, a religious experience moved Graffam join the local church and take part in services. While at Oberlin College, a school known for its missionary training, Graffam began studying to become a foreign missionary. She failed to go to Japan to become a missionary. However, in 1901 she was sent to Sivas, Ottoman Empire to be in charge of Female Education in the mission post of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the village.

Shortly after her 50th birthday, Graffam noticed a lump in her breast. She monitored it for six weeks, and finally agreed to have it removed. A Near East Relief (NER) Armenian physician, Dr. Hekimyan, conducted the procedure. Graffam was under the constant care of two NER nurses, and the medical team agreed that her surgery had been successful. Unfortunately, on the fourth day, her fever increased, her pulse was racing, and later she developed acute nephritis. She died four days later. Mary Graffam was much loved and highly respected in her community. Her colleague, Nina Rice, described her funeral as “touching . . . attended by crowds of poor people and orphans, and by government officials and a military escort. The people feel themselves sheep without a shepherd, and we have much to do to keep up their morale.”

Armenian genocide

Mary Louise Graffam was in Sivas when the Armenian genocide started. While marching, she saw deportees shot dead when attempting to drink water from a nearby river. She had also received reports that there was a "valley of corpses". Mary Graffam described the road leading to Malatya, where she was prevented by Turkish gendarmes from going any further: When we approached the bridge over Tokma Su it was a certainly fearful sight. As far as the eye could see over the plain was this real slow moving line of oxcarts. For hours not a drop of water on the road and the sun pouring down its very hottest. As we went on we began to see the dead from yesterday's company and the weak began to fall by the way...I piled as many as I could on our wagons and our pupils both boys and girls, worked like heroes. Graffam also hid Armenian girls who were to be abducted into Muslim households.