Six Months Among Brigands, McClure's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 1

"Six Months Among Brigands" by Ellen M. Stone, published in McClure's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (May 1902), is a first-person account of Stone’s kidnapping by Macedonian revolutionaries in 1901 and her six-month captivity in the Balkan mountains.

In "Six Months Among Brigands,"Ellen M. Stone, an American missionary, recounts her abduction by members of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) while traveling in Ottoman-controlled Macedonia. Held for ransom alongside a pregnant companion, she describes the harsh but at times compassionate treatment by the brigands, the difficult conditions in the mountains, and her observations of their cause, the struggle for Macedonian autonomy from the Ottoman Empire. Her eventual release in 1902 followed international negotiations and the payment of ransom.