Annah Robinson Watson

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Annah Robinson Watson (1898)

Annah Robinson Watson , born as Annah Walker Robinson , (* 1848 near Louisville , Kentucky , † 1930 ) was an American writer and feminist . She was the co-founder and president of the Nineteenth Century Club and a collector of American folklore .

Life

Annah Walker Robinson was born in 1848 to Archibald Magill Robinson and his wife Mary Louise, nee Taylor, on the Taylors' farm called Springfields near Louisville. She was the granddaughter of Hancock Taylor, the brother of US President Zachary Taylor . Robinson has been described as a "romantic, poetic, imaginative child". After a few years in the country, the family moved to Louisville, where they went to school, and later in Chicago ( Illinois studied).

After completing her studies, she began working as a writer. Among her poems was "Baby's Mission", which enjoyed great popularity and appeared in the London journal Chatterbox . She also won a competition in New York Churchman magazine for best lullaby. In addition to a large number of poems and prose works, which she published under her own name, there were also many unsigned works, including reviews and editorials .

Robinson married James Henry Watson (* 1848), the son of a judge from Mississippi , in 1870 . The couple had six children. The family later settled in Memphis ( Tennessee ) down, where her husband practiced as a lawyer. In the following years she published fables and traditions which she collected from the former slaves in order to keep them from being forgotten for posterity. But a valid reason for their activity was also the assumption ( ethnographic racism ) that America was the meeting point of the two great branches of the human family: from their origins in Central Asia , one group moved east and crossed the Bering Strait , while the rest split up and either to the south to Africa or west to what is now Saxony before they united in America on their migration west. Among her works were Some Notable Families of America, Of Sceptred Race, Passion Flowers, and a talk called Comparative Afro-American Folk-Lore given during the International Folk-Lore Congress at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

In Memphis, Robinson was a founding member and third president of the Nineteenth Century Club , the largest women's club in the south . At the time, clubs were viewed as schools where women could expand their thinking. The club was affiliated with the women's suffrage movement, although members made it clear that they were a very feminine breed of activist. They often stated that they helped women get better in family life. Although Robinson warned against pursuing activism at the expense of the family, she noted "a new sense of power and efficiency among American women". In this context, she published the work The New Woman of the New South & the Attitude of Southern Women on the Suffrage Question in 1895 together with the women's rights activist Josephine Henry .

In 1913, General James Grant Wilson performed her poem entitled "The Siege of Vicksburg, a Battle of the Bluffs" on her account at the 43rd meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee .

In 1914, Robinson published her work Golden Deeds on the Field of Honor: Stories of Young American Heroes with a focus on the Civil War , especially from the perspective of the southerners.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Merrow Egerton Sorley: Lewis of Warner Hall: The History of a Family, Including the Genealogy of Descendants in Both the Male and Female Lines, Biographical Sketches of Its Members, and Their Descent from Other Early Virginia Families , Genealogical Publishing Company, 1935, p. 648, ISBN 978-0-8063-0831-9
  2. ^ Wedell, Marsha: The Nineteenth Century Club in Elite women and the reform impulse in Memphis, 1875-1915, University of Tennessee Press, 1991, pp. 81f, ISBN 0-87049-704-9
  3. ^ Annah Robinson Watson: Of Sceptred Race , Early Printing and Publishing Company, 1910, p. 158
  4. ↑ a b c Frances Elizabeth Willard; Mary Ashton Rice Livermore: American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies with Over 1,400 Portraits: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Lives and Achievements of American Women During the Nineteenth Century , Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1897, p. 752
  5. ↑ Sundquist, Eric J .: To wake the nations: race in the making of American literature , Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-674-89331-3
  6. ^ Charles H. Sergel: The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893, 1898, pp. 327-340
  7. ^ Marsha Wedell: Elite Women and the Reform Impulse in Memphis, 1875-1915 , University of Tennessee Press, 1991, pp. 1f, ISBN 978-0-87049-704-9
  8. ↑ Guide to the Lindseth Collection Of American Woman Suffrage, ca.1820–1920 , rmc.library.cornell.edu, accessed October 28, 2017
  9. ↑ Report of the Proceedings of the Reunions of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee , Volumes 42-43, Society of the Army of the Tennessee, 1915, pp. 117-121
  10. ↑ Claudia Mills: Ethics and Children's Literature , Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., November 28, 2014, pp. 233f, ISBN 978-1-4724-4074-7
personal data
SURNAME Watson, Annah Robinson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robinson, Annah Walker (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and feminist
DATE OF BIRTH 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH near Louisville , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH 1930