Anna Maria Wells
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.
"[1] Wells' contemporaries, in addition to Sarah Hale, were Caroline Howard Gilman, Hannah Flagg Gould, Eliza Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney.
"[10] On October 18, 1800, her widowed mother married Joseph Locke (1767–1838),[11] a Boston merchant and fish dealer, whose first wife had been Mary's sister Martha.
[12][13] 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.
Thomas Wells, (vintner on Ann Street, "four doors north of the drawbridge"),[19] and a grandson of the Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Adams.
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.
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.
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.
"[1] 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.
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.
