Biography
Roswell Dunlop McClelland was born on January 25, 1914 to Ross St. John McClelland and Alys M. Mitchell. After his mother passed away when he was 1 ½ years old, Roswell moved between family members, family friends, and boarding schools, including schools in England and Switzerland. During the 1930s, he spent time in Italy and Germany, where he witnessed Adolf Hitler give a speech in Munich. He graduated with a BA from Duke University in 1936 and an MA from Columbia University in 1940. On November 19, 1938, he married Marjorie Helen Miles.
Marjorie was born on August 17, 1913 to Dr. Walter Miles and Elizabeth Kirk Miles. Like her husband, Marjorie lost her mother as a child, and Walter remarried Dr. Catherine Cox. Walter, an experimental psychologist, held professorships at Stanford, and later at Yale University. Marjorie graduated from Stanford and did graduate work at the University of Cincinnati and Yale University, training in child psychology. She directed Manhattanville Day Nursery School in Harlem in New York City.
After his graduation from Columbia, Roswell applied for and received a scholarship from the Quakers to study an archival collection related to Voltaire in Geneva, Switzerland, but due to the outbreak of war in Europe he was not able to use the scholarship. However, Marjorie was a Quaker and was friends with a number of members of the American Friends Service Committee, who were looking for aid workers to send overseas. Due to Roswell’s capacity with languages, Mary Hoxie Jones, a friend of the couple and AFSC worker, recruited them to go overseas for the AFSC. In August 1940, the couple went to Europe, spending a month in Lisbon before traveling to Rome to set up a refugee aid office. In August 1941, the office closed and the couple moved to Marseilles, where they joined an extant AFSC office. During their year in Marseilles, among other activities, Roswell worked with relief for the Les Milles concentration camp, and Marjorie worked with the selection of children for the USCOM children’s transport to the United States in the summer of 1942. In the late summer of 1942, the couple moved to Geneva and headed the AFSC offices in Switzerland.
After the War Refugee Board was created, Roswell was selected to be the Board’s representative in Switzerland beginning in April 1944. He commuted to Bern four days a week, while Marjorie ran the AFSC offices in Geneva. After the end of the war, Roswell became a United States Foreign Service officer. The family remained in Switzerland until 1949, when they moved to Washington, DC. During his Foreign Service career, McClelland served in Madrid (1953-1957), West Africa (covering Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania) (1960-1962), Southern Rhodesia (1965) Athens (1967-1970) and was the United States Ambassador to Niger (1970-1973). The couple had four children: Barre (b. 1943), Kirk (b. 1944), Alice (b. 1947) and Caroline (b. 1951). Marjorie McClelland passed away on June 12, 1978. In 1988, Roswell married Charlene Keeley, and gained two step-children, Linda and Nicholas. Roswell McClelland passed away on May 6, 1995.
