María de Maeztu Whitney (18 July 1882, Vitoria - 7 January 1948, Mar del Plata, Argentina) was a Spanish educator, feminist, founder of the Residencia de Señoritas and the Lyceum Club in Madrid. She was sister of the writer, journalist and occasional diplomat, Ramiro de Maeztu and the painter Gustavo de Maeztu.
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Early life
María was the fourth of five children born in Vitoria the capital of the Basque province of Álava. Her father, Manuel de Maeztu Rodríguez was a Cuban engineer and landowner from Navarre who had met her mother, Joan Whitney, the daughter of a British diplomat in Paris, when she was sixteen. María's parents never married. In 1889 the unexpected death of her father in Cuba led to confusing administrative problems and the family was left in ruins. Her mother, a fragile but enterprising woman with a strong personality, took her three sons and two daughters to Bilbao and, in 1891, set up a residential school for girls to study French and English and improve their cultural skills. María started teaching at her mother's Anglo-French academy and then began to teach in the public schools of Bilbao. In 1903 she accepted the Ayuntamiento of Bilbao's post as director of the newly established night school for adults and also served as director of kindergarten (1902–1912). She created summer school colonies and focused on secular education which garnered her many enemies. Her fame became so widespread that, despite her youth, she was invited to share the stage with Concepción Sáiz, Miguel de Unamuno and other academicians at the Exposición escolar de Bilbao (Exhibition of Scholars) in 1905.