author
Anne M. Mitchell
1847–1929
A 19th-century American writer whose stories often centered on faith, education, and life after emancipation. Her small body of fiction includes works published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, with "The Freed Boy in Alabama" remaining the best known today.
1 Audiobook
The freed boy in Alabama
by Anne M. Mitchell
About the author
Born in 1847, Anne M. Mitchell—also listed in library records as Anne Mary Mitchell and in some catalogs as Anne Maria Mitchell—was an American author connected to the Mitchell family of Nantucket. A biographical sketch from the Maria Mitchell Association identifies her as a niece of the astronomer Maria Mitchell and notes that she was known in the family as Annie Maria.
Her surviving books suggest a clear focus: short, morally driven fiction for young readers. Library and public-domain records confirm titles including The Freed Boy in Alabama (1869) and Crystals (1870), both issued in Philadelphia by the Presbyterian Board of Publication. The Freed Boy in Alabama, set in the years after the Civil War, is especially notable for taking up emancipation and education through the story of a newly freed child.
The Maria Mitchell Association says her writing and publishing slowed after marriage and family life, and that she later devoted much of her energy to church work. She died in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, leaving behind a brief but distinctive record as a writer of earnest post–Civil War juvenile fiction.