Ann Phillips Collection

Collection

Identifier: 2008.050

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Ann Phillips Collections includes materials primarily concerning U.S. Ambassador Fletcher Warren’s career in the Foreign Service and Ann Phillips’s work in writing a biography of Ambassador Warren. Also included are documents from other local Wolfe City subjects: a book on Louise Durham, an educator from the area; a book by Betty Hahn Bernbaum on her life with her husband Maurice Bernbaum; and other documents from Ann Phillips’s writings such as research documents and articles for her Warren book, as well as papers relating to local families.

Series I, Ann Phillips, contains documents and correspondence by Ann Phillips concerning the Warren biography. The correspondence includes letters from Ann Phillips to publishers and Fletcher Warren as she is writing the biography and is attempting to get the biography published. The documents include a bound and unbound copy of her thesis on Fletcher Warren, and papers documenting the genealogy of several local Wolfe City families.

Series II, Fletcher Warren Biography, contains materials Ann Phillips wrote and used for the book. There are outlines for various chapters of the biography, with support documents including correspondence from Warren himself to other individuals, and papers Ann Phillips wrote about Warren. Newspaper clippings about Warren’s career in the news, especially Wolfe City’s local news, are here as well. This also includes Spanish newspapers from Warren’s time working in Central and South America, and two scrapbooks of photographs from his time in the Foreign Service.

Series III, Other History, contains subjects apart from the primary Warren and Ann Phillips focus of the collection. These include various newspaper clippings about Wolfe City history, a book written by Betty Hahn Bernbaum about her life while her husband, Maurice, was in the Foreign Service, and a book about the life of Wolfe City educator Louise Durham. There are also three folders of tapes included that are likely oral histories from a Texas A&M Commerce history project from Ann Phillips.

Dates

Creation: 1938 - 2005

Conditions Governing Use

Items in this collection are protected by applicable copyright laws.

Biographical / Historical

Mary Ann Haywood was born on June 7, 1924 in Wolfe City, Texas and grew up in the area. She attended Brantley Grove Business School in Fort Worth, Texas and received a degree in 1943. After many years working as a legal secretary, she attended Texas Women’s University, where she submitted a thesis about former U.S. Ambassador Fletcher Warren as part of the requirements for her Master of Arts degree in History/Government in August 1986. She also received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the same university in 1988.

She married Delma Phillips in 1941 and they had three children together.

She would continue to work on writing essays on Warren’s career and life, culminating in a book titled Fletcher Warren Reporting for Duty, Sir, which was published in January 2006. Phillips also wrote on many other topics of historical note. She provided a weekly newspaper column on historical events for three years and contributed an entry to the Handbook of Texas. She wrote many articles for book on the history of Wolfe City, and she erected three granite commemorative markers in Hunt County.