EN

Birdie Mathews

Birdie Mathews, a schoolteacher in the United States, established the brief correspondence between both Anne Frank and Juanita Wagner, and Margot Frank and Betty Ann Wagner.

Person

Vervaardiger onbekend. Afkomstig uit privécollectie; Susan Goldman Rubin, Searching for Anne Frank. Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003
  • Birdie Blanche Mathews
  • Born on: Feb. 5, 1880
  • Born in: Danville, Iowa, USA
  • Died on: June 1, 1974
  • Died in: Danville, Iowa, USA

Birdie Mathews, rond 1940

Vervaardiger onbekend. Afkomstig uit privécollectie; Susan Goldman Rubin, Searching for Anne Frank. Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003

Rechthebbende(n) onbekend

Birdie Mathews was a school teacher in Danville, Iowa. To improve the teaching of rural schools like hers, she studied at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, Colorado State University and Columbia University in New York.[1] Miss Birdie, as she was called by her pupils, also travelled to Europe for this purpose in 1914 and 1939. In Amsterdam, she got to know other teachers. From them she received the names and addresses of school students, who wanted to correspond with American peers. It was probably then that she also met Martha von der Möhlen, Margot Frank's English teacher at the Municipal Lyceum for Girls in Amsterdam.[2]

To teach her students more about the world, Miss Birdie started the so-called 'programme of international correspondence' at her school in the school year of 1939-'40. From a list of names, her pupils could choose a pen pal from Europe. This created a short correspondence between both Anne Frank and Juanita Wagner and Margot Frank and Betty Ann Wagner.[3]

Birdie Mathews retired in 1945 and then began keeping diaries, something she had previously done mainly during her many travels.[4]

Source personal data.[5] Address: Danville, Iowa, VS.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Shelby Myers-Verhage, ‘Postmarked from Amsterdam. Anne Frank and her Iowa Pen Pal’, in: The Palimpsest 76 (1995) nr. 4 (winter), p. 152-159, aldaar 153.
  2. ^ Elsewhere, it is suggested that it is also possible that they met at classes at Columbia University in New York, but it is unclear whether Martha von der Möhlen attended these. See: Goldman Rubin, Searching for Anne Frank, p. 7. What is certain is that Birdie Mathews travelled around Europe in 1914 and 1939 and had visited the Netherlands during her first trip (and possibly also in 1939).
  3. ^ Goldman Rubin, Seaching for Anne Frank, p. 9.
  4. ^ Shelby Myers-Verhage, ‘The Diaries of Anne Frank and Birdie Mathews’, in: The Palimpsest 76 (1995) nr. 4 (winter), p. 160-161, aldaar: p. 161. 
  5. ^ "Find a Grave Index," database, FamilySearch, Birdie Blanche Mathews, 1974; Burial, Danville, Des Moines, Iowa, United States of America, Jaggar Cemetery; citing record ID 8219375, Find a Grave.