author
Amanda Mathews Chase
1866–1953
A writer and educator whose fiction grew from her experiences teaching immigrant communities in Los Angeles and Mexico City. Her work combines heartfelt storytelling with a lasting interest in language, family, and belonging.
1 Audiobook
The heart of an orphan
by Amanda Mathews Chase
About the author
Amanda Mathews Chase (1866–1953) was an American writer and educator associated with Los Angeles’s early settlement-house and immigrant-education movements. In 1903, she was among the original evening schoolteachers at the College Settlement, where she taught English to immigrants. She later taught at a private girls’ school in Mexico City for four years.
Chase published fiction under the name Amanda Mathews, including The Hieroglyphics of Love: Stories of Sonoratown and Old Mexico (1906), inspired by the people and communities she encountered in her teaching work. Her later novel, The Heart of an Orphan (1912), explored childhood, hardship, family, and the search for belonging.
She also helped develop California’s “home teacher” program, volunteering for more than a year to demonstrate how teachers could connect schools with immigrant families. Chase wrote practical English-language lessons and primers for foreign-speaking women, blending education, domestic guidance, and civic instruction in support of her reform work.