Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy Waterston (1812–1899)

Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy, later Waterston, was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a famous family. She was the youngest daughter of Josiah Quincy III, who served as mayor of Boston, U.S. Representative, and president of Harvard University, and his wife Eliza Susan Morton Quincy. In 1840, she married Rev. Robert C. Waterston, a Unitarian minister. The couple had two children, neither of whom lived to adulthood. Anna became an abolitionist and a founding member of the Women's Education Association (WEA) to promote higher education for women. Between 1872 and 1929, the WEA played a part in the formation of Simmons College, Radcliffe College, and other institutions. The first of Anna's several volumes of poetry was published in 1863. She also published numerous articles in the Atlantic Monthly, using the pseudonyms A. C. Q. W. and W. A. C. Q.
She cultivated a wide circle of friends and acquaintances and was intimately acquainted with many of the most distinguished people of her own and her parents' generation. In 2003, her diary, written when she was 17, was edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer and published under the title A Woman's Wit and Whimsy: The 1833 Diary of Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy.