Please post Dodd-related materials here; you can also see the blog posts with the Dodd label.

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Note by this poster, Frances Dodd:

Stuart Dodd (1900-1975) was my grandfather, husband to Betty and father to Peter, Bruce, and Hugh. He was born at the Presbyterian mission in Talas, Turkey. His father and grandfather (and, later, one of his brothers) were medical doctors called to serve overseas from their home base in Montclair, NJ. [The first American Dodd had immigrated from England and died during the winnowing season in 1640. Some of the original Daniel Dod's offspring settled Doddtown, now a suburb of East Orange, NJ.]

Stuart met Elizabeth Cairns while at college (he at Princeton, she at Radcliffe). Betty's father had abandoned the family and died while she was still a child. By the time she graduated (1922), her mother had also died (of the plague), leaving Betty and younger brother Bill both orphans. Betty then joined an overseas mission in India where Stuart came a-courting. Famously, the couple somehow evaded their chaperone and locked themselves in the Taj Mahal one evening, thus embarking on a union which would last the rest of their lives.

Now married, Stuart and Betty came out to Beirut in the late 1920s, where they joined the founders of the American Community in Ainab. Teaching at AUB (Sociology Dept.), Stuart was among colleagues with similar histories and missionary backgrounds (Kerr, Eddy, Crawford, Bliss, etc.). It is not known exactly when or where he wrote the below chronicles, but I think they must must have been relatively contemporary for, as mentioned within, carbon copies were distributed among the tribes - presumably before (or not too long after) the great diaspora caused by World War Two.

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