Anna Maria Walker

His finances depleted, Kinaldy was let out and Colonel Patton was appointed Governor of the south Atlantic island of St Helena in 1801;[5] Anna Maria and her sisters Sarah and Jessy, accompanied him as housekeepers.

He entered the British Army in 1799 and was commissioned Lieutenant in the 8th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (the King's Royal Irish) in 1801 and went with them to India the following year.

Colonel in 1818, the following year he was appointed Deputy Adjutant General of Ceylon; the Walkers moved there and remained there (apart from a furlough in Britain 1826–9) until October 1838.

In 1840 he was appointed Brigadier in command of the Meerut Station (by which time he held the rank of Major General on the East Indies establishment), until 1843 when the 21st were transferred to the Madras Presidency.

After about six years, the Walkers returned to Britain on furlough, and rented a house in the newly built Carlton Street, close to the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

This contact probably induced the couple to take up the task on return of supplying herbarium specimens, seeds, and living plants for the Edinburgh Botanic Garden and for Graham's and Hooker's private herbaria.

Colonel Walker who returned first to Ceylon wrote to Anna to learn botanical drawing so that she could record fragile specimens when they started to explore and collect.

At this time huge road-building activities were being undertaken, as the Kingdom of Kandy had only recently fallen to British control – this allowed access to rich collecting areas, especially around the developing hill station of Nuwara Eliya.

[1] General Walker spent the two years of his military postings in the plains of northern India, and their botanical interests were reduced and their occasional ventures included an excursion to Mussoorie in the Himalayan foothills in June 1841.

Her last days were spent in Mangalore, on the Malabar Coast, with her son Warren, where she died, aged 74, on 8 September 1852; her tomb survives in the graveyard of St Paul's church.