Anna Maria Wells (née Foster; 1795–1868) was a 19th-century poet and a writer of children’s literature. The poet and editor Sarah Josepha Hale wrote that Wells, as a child, had a "passionate love of reading and music," and began to write verses when very young. In 1830, Wells published Poems and Juvenile Sketches, a compilation of her early work, after which she contributed occasionally to various periodicals. Hale opined that "the predominant characteristics of [Wells'] poetry were tenderness of feeling, and simplicity and perspicuity of language." Wells' contemporaries, in addition to Sarah Hale, were Caroline Howard Gilman, Hannah Flagg Gould, Eliza Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney.
Early years Anna Maria Wells was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1795 and was baptized there (as Anna Mary Foster) on September 20, 1795."Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZZR-Y36 : 15 January 2020), Anna Mary Foster, 1795. NOTE: See Microfilm No. 007729402, page 140/742: "Anna Mary Foster, d[aughter] of wid[ow] Polly, bp. September 20, 1795. She was the daughter of Captain Benjamin Foster (1769–1795) and his wife, Mary "Polly" Ingersoll (1770–1849).Benjamin Foster and Mary Ingersoll married on January 11, 1789. See: "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q29G-GY89 : 18 February 2020), Benjamin Foster and Polly Ingersoll, 11 Jan 1789; citing Marriage, Gloucester, Essex, Massachusetts, United States, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston; FHL microfilm 007009706 Her father, captain of the brigantine Polly from 1791 until 1794,Joseph Foster, The grandchildren of Col. Joseph Foster : of Ipswich and Gloucester, Mass., 1730-1804 (1885), p.10. died between June and September 1795 when she was an infant.Mary "Polly" Foster was a widow when she baptized her daughter in September 1795.For an account of Benjamin Foster's last days, see Guns off Gloucester (1975), by Joseph E. Garland, pp.280-281.
Wells' brother, William Vincent Foster (born in 1790),"Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZZT-BJJ : 15 January 2020), William Vincent Foster, 1790. died on April 21, 1817 "on the Coast of Africa."The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 47 (1916), pp.365-366. At the time, he was the "master of the John Willis, schooner of Boston...trading with the Natives for ivory."British and Foreign State Papers, 1816–1817 (London: 1838), pp. 139-140.
On October 18, 1800, her widowed mother married Joseph Locke (1767–1838),The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 47 (1916). a Boston merchant and fish dealer, whose first wife had been Mary's sister Martha. After their marriage, Joseph and Mary Locke lived at Boston and Hingham, where they had seven children, among them the poet Frances Sargent Osgood.Boston City Directories (1803, 1806).
According to an obituary notice, written in 1868:
[Anna Maria Wells] was born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and receiving a thorough education, especially in the department of fine arts, became celebrated even in early youth as a painter in water colors, as a musician and poet. In 1824, she won the Handel and Haydn prize — a large and beautiful diamond cross — for the poem delivered at that society's inauguration. Her success was the more noteworthy, as there were many competitors, some of whom had gained a national reputation.
Career and family
Anna Maria Foster and Thomas Wells (1790–1861)Wells is sometimes conflated with Thomas Wells (1780–1829), a Boston bookbinder. The error can be traced to Whitman's The History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company (1842), page 378. Whitman mistakenly made the bookbinder a son of Capt. Thomas Wells. Furthermore, the poet's son, Thomas Foster Wells (1822–1903), a shipping merchant, has been conflated with the bookbinder's son, Thomas Gilman Wells (1822–1848), who was a printer.For Thomas Wells' birth, see: "Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VQXK-9S4 : 14 January 2020), Thomas Wells, 1790.Thomas Wells died on March 11, 1861. The date can be found in Poems of Nature and Life (1899), page 44, by Wells' nephew John Witt Randall. A funeral notice was published in the Boston Evening Transcript, March 12, 1861, p.3. were married at the Hollis Street Church in Boston on August 6, 1821, by Rev. John Pierpont, a poet, lawyer, temperance advocate, and Unitarian minister."Massachusetts Marriages, 1695-1910, 1921-1924", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHK6-65N : 28 July 2021), Thomas Wells, 1821."Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG1K-PB76 : 29 November 2018), Thomas Wells and Anna M Foster, 1821; citing Marriage, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston; FHL microfilm 007011048. NOTE: Thomas Wells married (1st) at Windsor, Vermont in 1814 Belinda Lull, who died on August 8, 1818, as per Francis S. Drake, Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati of Massachusetts (1873), pp.503-504. Thomas Wells was the son of Capt. Thomas Wells, (vintner on Ann Street, "four doors north of the drawbridge"),The Boston Directory, (Boston: John Norman, 1789), p. 46. and a grandson of the Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Adams.In his Will (1803), Samuel Adams bequeathed "all my real estate in the town of Boston" to Thomas Wells, Thomas's sister Elizabeth Wells Randall (1783–1868), and his brother, Samuel Adams Wells (1787–1840). In her Will (1808), Adams' second wife, Elizabeth Wells Adams, left Thomas Wells “[Thomas] Stackhouse on the Bible, in two volumes" and other books. He dabbled in poetry while earning his living (from about 1820 to 1828) as an inspector for the U.S. Customs Office in Boston.Boston City Directories (1820, 1822, 1826, and 1828). Wells probably lost his job after Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams in the 1828 presidential election. In 1825, he read his poem, Ye Shades of Martyred Heroes, to a crowd of thousands gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and in 1826, the Boston News-letter announced, "The prize poem delivered at the Hubbard Gallery, was a good thing, written by a good poet, who has taken many good premiums before this for his good midnight lucubrations — Mr. Thomas Wells, as well as his lady, are beautiful writers who never fail of being [number one], when writing for a medal." Several of his poems appeared in Kettel's 1829 Specimens of American Poetry.
Between 1822 and 1828, Anna Wells bore four children, the first of whom was Thomas Foster Wells (1822–1903),"Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915, 1921-1924," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NWF9-6H6 : 2 March 2021), Thomas Wells in entry for Thomas F. Wells, 14 Jan 1903; citing Winchester, Massachusetts, v 540 cn 5, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 2,057,764. a shipping merchant, raiser of shipwrecks, and father of the mathematician Webster Wells and the architect Joseph Morrill Wells. Her third son, William Vincent Wells (1826–1876), wrote a three-volume biography of his ancestor, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, first published in 1865.New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol 23, 1869, p. 233. In 1830, Anna Wells published Poems and Juvenile Sketches, the compilation for which she is best known. The Atlantic Monthly Magazine praised it, writing: "The purest and best poetry for children is written by Mrs. Anna Maria Wells, whose new book lies by us at this moment. We have always been an admirer of the chastened, unaffected, natural vein of this lady's genius...and it is pleasant to know that her delightful book sells rapidly.""The Editor's Table," in The Atlantic Monthly Magazine, January 1839, page 709.
In 1834, Thomas Wells left his wife and children and joined the Navy as schoolmaster aboard the frigate USS Potomac and later aboard the frigate USS John Adams. From December 1836 until July 1838, he served aboard the USS Constitution as private secretary to Commodore Jesse Elliott, Commander of the Navy's Mediterranean Squadron, during which time he wrote Letters on Palestine, a chronicle of his side-trips to the Holy Land while stationed in the Middle East.The second edition was published in 1846. In a biographical sketch of Anna Maria Wells, written in 1837 after Thomas Wells had left Boston, Sarah Josepha Hale wrote that while Wells "was a man of considerable literary talent and taste...unfortunately for his family, he had small inclination for business, and great love for the luxuries of life." According to Hale, the support and education of Anna Wells' four children "was imposed upon her" and that "she found her talent for music the most available for her purpose." The historian Sidney Perley suggested that she earned her living as an educator, writing in an 1889 sketch that "Mrs. Wells' chief attention was given to her school for young ladies." She lived in South Carolina during at least part of the couple's separation, Army and Navy Chronicle, Vol 11, No. 8, August 20, 1840, page 131. and may have been living there in 1837, when the Charleston-based Southern Literary Journal published her ironical short story, Auto-biography of Amelia Sophia Smink.
Thomas Wells' employment by Commodore Elliott caused him to become the central witness in Elliott's court martial trial in 1840. Numerous witnesses were summoned to testify as to Wells' truthfulness, or lack thereof. Among them was Rev. John Pierpont, who testified (answering more than he was asked): "I am a clergyman residing in the city of Boston...I know Mr. Thomas Wells...I officiated at his second marriage, and am quite intimate with the family into which he married...his intemperance is the only point, from any one living, that I ever heard his character called in question; I once heard a person who is now dead speak to the prejudice of his character in another respect; but that person himself did not enjoy the best reputation for truth and veracity...that man questioned his conjugal fidelity...I never heard Mr. Wells's character for truth and veracity questioned by any person whatever; I would believe him as a witness, under oath."Army and Navy Chronicle, Vol 11, No. 8, August 20, 1840, page 114.