Whistler, Anna Mathilda ___ 1804-1881 ___ American ___ n/a

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Anna McNeill was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the daughter of Scottish-born Daniel McNeill, a physician, and Martha Kingsley. She married George Washington Whistler, a widower with three children, and gave birth to two sons, James and William, who survived (as well as two who did not). She went with her husband to Russia where he worked as a railway engineer. When James was only nine, the Scottish painter Sir William Allen took an interest in the boy's painting, and he was enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. George died in 1849 from cholera, and Anna returned to the US, to live in Connecticut. Like many other families at the time, the Whistlers were divided by the Civil War. In 1863, Anna crossed the lines to help care for William (a surgeon in the Confederate Army), and then moved to London to live with her other son, James, who had become an artist. It was during this period that James painted the famous 'Whistler's Mother'.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1843-1849 ___ domestic family Russia England

WEB TEXT LINKS
one ong extract
one short quote
 

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Whistler's Mother: Her Life, Letters and Journal
 

July 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.