Introduction

Biography

Anna was the daugh­ter of Hamp­den Cutts and Ma­ry P. S. Jar­vis. Her par­ents, for­mer­ly of Ports­mouth, New Hamp­shire, lived on a farm owned by Gov­er­nor Paul Spoon­er of Ver­mont.

Anna was born on the 60th an­ni­ver­sa­ry of the Am­er­ican re­vo­lu­tion­a­ry Bat­tle of Bunk­er Hill.

Her gifts in mu­sic, art, li­te­ra­ture and the sci­enc­es were evi­dent at an ear­ly age. Her first li­ter­ary pro­duct­ion was at age 10, a me­moir of la­dy liv­ing near­by who had re­cen­tly died.

She ea­si­ly learned vo­cal and in­stru­ment­al mu­sic, draw­ing and paint­ing. For in­stru­ments, she pre­ferred the vio­lin, but was much more pro­fi­cient on the pi­ano. Be­tween age 18 and 20 she wrote both prose and po­et­ry, as well as in­stru­ment­al mu­sic.

She stu­died La­tin and French, rhe­to­ric and his­to­ry, and gra­du­ate­d from an ac­a­de­my in Thet­ford, Ver­mont, in 1855.

Before gra­du­a­tion, she taught in a neigh­bor­ing dis­trict school, and in the fall of 1856 went to War­saw, Vir­gin­ia, to teach, stay­ing there one year.

On her re­turn, she be­came in­ter­est­ed in the move­ment to pur­chase George Wash­ing­ton’s es­tate, Mount Ver­non. The piece she wrote about it, un­der the pseu­do­nym of Er­nest, was print­ed in the Ver­mont Chro­ni­cle.

In 1859, when vi­sit­ing Ha­no­ver, New Hamp­shire, she met Abel Trum­bell How­ard, a stu­dent at Dart­mouth Col­lege and na­tive of West Hart­ford, Ver­mont. They were en­gaged the fol­low­ing year, and mar­ried in Au­gust 1861.

The ear­li­er part of their mar­ried life, the two taught in Wal­pole, New Hamp­shire; Brat­tle­bo­ro, Ver­mont; Brook­lyn, New York; and Ches­ter, New Jer­sey. Af­ter this, they were for se­ven years prin­ci­pals of a large board­ing school in Ma­ta­wan, New Jer­sey. In the fall of 1873, they re­turned to Brook­lyn, which be­came their long term home.

During this pe­ri­od, An­na wrote lit­tle. On­ly af­ter their last move to Brook­lyn, where she spent two thirds of her mar­ried life, did she be­gin to pub­lish ex­ten­sive­ly.

Periodicals for which she wrote fre­quent­ly in­clude The Nur­se­ry, the Church Un­ion, The Chris­tian at Work, Mo­ther’s Ma­ga­zine, The Wo­man’s Jour­nal, The House­hold, and Our Home Ma­ga­zine.

Besides li­ter­ary en­dea­vors, she found out­lets for her en­er­gy in the Wo­man’s Chris­tian Tem­per­ance Un­ion, the Wo­man’s Suf­frage As­so­ci­ation, the Brook­lyn Wo­man’s In­di­an As­so­cia­tion, and the So­cie­ty of Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals.

In the last few years of her life, she took up mu­sic­al com­po­si­tion again, and wrote se­ver­al hymns.