Ann Warder

Ann Warder, born Ann Head (1758–1829) was an American diarist. Her journal, kept for her sister, provides an account of Pennsylvania Quaker life.^[1]

Life

Ann Head was born into a Quaker family in Ipswich, England in 1758. She was the daughter of John Head and Ann Wheeler. Her father was a grocer. In 1779 she married John Warder (1751–1828), a wealthy Philadelphia-born merchant. After a decade of married life in England, the family moved to North America, settling permanently in Philadelphia in 1788.^[2]

The couple had ten children, seven of whom lived to be adults.^[2] They included Mary Ann Warder Bacon (1782–1865), Elizabeth Warder Janney (1793–1851), and Caroline Warder Cadbury (1801–1868).^[1] Her husband died in 1828, and she died in Philadelphia in 1829.^[2]

Extracts from Warder's journal were posthumously published in the Pennsylvania Magazine and Biography. Her papers, including letters and journals, are held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.^[2] Selections from her work have been anthologized in collections of women's writing or records of the American Revolution, including Second to None: From the sixteenth century to 1865 (University of Nebraska Press 1993).^[3]

Works

• 'Extracts from the Diary of Mrs. Ann Warder'. Pennsylvania Magazine and Biography, vol. 17, pp. 444–461 (1893) and vol. 18, pp. 51–63 (1894).