arts & cultural experiences
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Monastir
By Hana Truscott , MAK 16
“ She will go down in history as one of the heroines standing by the women of that country in the midst of peril when she might have gone to safety leaving them in need .”
- Dr . J . L . Barton , American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions , 1919
18 – Pauza Magazine
A glimpse into th
She arrived in Macedonia at the ready age of 23 , to help , to serve , to adventure . It ’ s a story that starts out similar to our stories as Peace Corps Volunteers , but the realities of her experience are beyond our wildest imaginations .
Born in Ohio and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts ( class of 1885 ), Mary Louisa Matthews set out as a missionary in 1888 to work in the first American Girls School in Monastir ( present-day Bitola ) at a time when Macedonia ’ s borders stretched east into Bulgaria , west into Albania and south all the way down to Salonica ( Thessaloniki ). She sailed first from the United States to Constantinople ( Istanbul ), and from there to Ottoman occupied Macedonia . Little did she know this adventure would take her through World War I , Balkan War I , Balkan War II , the Young Turk Revolution , the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire , and the kidnapping of Ms . Ellen Stone ( the first instance of an American being held as hostage by terrorists in the modern age ). The name of the country governing Monastir changed three times in just one year during her thirty-two years of service .
I was first introduced to the intriguing adventures of Miss Matthews this past May , when her grand-niece Peggy Hanson arrived in Bitola to re-trace the steps of her greataunt . Peggy is no stranger to adventure . She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the first group in Turkey ( 1962 ).
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