Anne Briardy Mergen

{{Short description|American editorial cartoonist}} {{Infobox comics creator | image =  | imagesize = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = August 19, 1906 | birth_place = Omaha, Nebraska | death_date = July 3, 1994 (age 87) | death_place =Dade City, Florida | nationality = {{USA}} | area = cartoonist, editorial cartoonist | alias = | notable works = | awards = }}

'''Anne Briardy Mergen''' (August 19, 1906 – July 3, 1994)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VVJ7-MDG|title=Anne Briardy Mergen, Florida Death Index, 1877-1998|website=FamilySearch|access-date=December 2, 2018}}</ref> was an editorial cartoonist who lived in Miami, Florida. Hired by the ''Miami Daily News'' in 1933, she was one of the first woman editorial cartoonists in the United States,<ref>[http://www.historymiami.org/museum/exhibitions/details/anne-mergen/ Anne Mergen; Florida Cartoons] June 21, 2008 - September 04, 2008; Traveling Exhibition, History Miami. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120604214421/http://www.historymiami.org/museum/exhibitions/details/anne-mergen/ Archived] June 4, 2012 at the Wayback Machine.</ref> and for most of her career was the only woman in the U.S. working as an editorial cartoonist.<ref name=library>[http://library.osu.edu/blogs/librarynews/2008/01/29/anne-mergen-editorial-cartoonist/ Anne Mergen] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511203241/http://library.osu.edu/blogs/librarynews/2008/01/29/anne-mergen-editorial-cartoonist/ |date=May 11, 2008 }} Library News Ohio State University</ref>

==Life== Mergen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906 to Frank and Elizabeth Briardy, second-generation Irish immigrants.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists|last=Kennedy|first=Martha H.|publisher=University Press of Mississippi, in Association with the Library of Congress|year=2018|isbn=978-1496815927|pages=149, 150}}</ref> She studied commercial art at the American Academy of Art in Chicago<ref name=":0" /> before moving with her family to Miami in 1926.<ref name="fame" /> She worked as a fashion-advertising artist for Burdine's, a department store centered in Florida, before joining the ''Miami Daily News'', part of the Cox newspaper chain, as its editorial cartoonist in 1933.<ref name=":0" />

She married her husband Frank Mergen in 1932 and worked from her home studio in Miami as the mother to two children.<ref name=":0" />

==Work== Mergen's transition into the editorial cartooning industry began when she created a one-page fashion story called "Anne and Peg's Scrapbook" and submitted it to the ''Miami Daily News''. The newspaper expanded her story to a two-page feature and published "Anne and Peg's Scrapbook" for three years.<ref name=":0" />

After making this connection to the paper, the ''Miami Daily News'' published Mergen's first editorial cartoon in April 1933 and she became the paper's full-time editorial cartoonist in 1936; at the time, she was the only editorial cartoonist at the paper and the only female editorial cartoonist in the U.S.<ref name=":0" />

During her career, Mergen covered political and social issues like the Great Depression, World War II, nuclear power, the Cold War, environmental tourism, and city government.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.flhistoriccapitol.gov/Pages/ExhibitsAndCollections/Exhibits/Cartoons.aspx|title=Anne Mergen: Florida Cartoons |website=Florida Historic Capitol Museum |access-date=2018-12-03}}</ref>

She retired in 1956, but continued publishing cartoons as late as 1959; Anne Mergen produced over 7,000 cartoons in her lifetime, and her work appeared in the ''Atlanta Journal'', ''Dayton News'', and ''Miami Daily News''.<ref name="library" />

== Awards and achievements == After the ''Miami Daily News'' won a 1939 Pulitzer Prize for exposing local government corruption, Mergen's editor Hal Lyshon said, "Don't let anyone ever tell you it wasn't Mergen cartoons that won the Pulitzer today."<ref name=":0" />

She received the Wendy Warren Award from Today's Woman magazine in 1953, an national award for a woman "who has added stature to woman's place in the world, achieved marked success in business, industry, science or the arts, or who has contributed to the community welfare through her activities and accomplishments."<ref name=":0" />

Mergen was also a 2012/2013 nominee for the Florida Women's Hall of Fame for her persistence in the male dominated field of editorial cartooning and for the awareness she brought to local, national, and global issues.<ref name="fame" /> During her career, Mergen was praised for her work and even received fan mail from J. Edgar Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt, later having two of her cartoons hung in the Roosevelt Memorial Room in Hyde Park.<ref name="fame">{{cite web |title=Florida Women's Hall of Fame |url=http://www.fcsw.net/HallofFame.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131018171235/http://www.fcsw.net/HallofFame.htm |archive-date=2013-10-18 }}</ref>

After her death in 1994, her grandchildren, Matthew Bernhardt and Christine Hoverman, donated 600 of her original cartoons to the Cartoon Research Library, which are now held as the Anne Mergen Collection.<ref name="library" /> Many newspapers containing her cartoons are collected at the Library of Congress, the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library, and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now known as HistoryMiami).<ref name=":1" />

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[http://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_exhibits/annemergen/ The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: "Anne Mergen: Editorial Cartoonist" digital exhibit]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mergen, Anne Briardy}} Category:1906 births Category:1994 deaths Category:American editorial cartoonists Category:American women editorial cartoonists Category:American women illustrators Category:20th-century American illustrators Category:Artists from Omaha, Nebraska Category:20th-century American women artists