On 13 December 1788 she married the Revd Dr Andrew Brown (c. 1744–1805), who, following work as a chaplain in the army, became minister of Falkland, Fife (1784–1802), and then Tranent.
27 of the ‘A’ texts in English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98) by Francis James Child were supplied by Anna.
'Anna Gordon's father expressed surprise at his daughter's skill in balladry and confessed that the words and tunes were previously unknown to him (as they were to his correspondent, the antiquary William Tytler, 1711–1792).
'[1] Whatever the precise relationship of Anna's ballads to earlier oral tradition, Anna's correspondence reveals 'a woman with a well-defined aesthetic sense, an established knowledge of literature and ballad scholarship, and some sense of the importance of her contributions to that scholarship'.
by Sigrid Rieuwerts, The Scottish Text Society, Fifth Series, 8 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011) ISBN 978-1-89797-632-6.