Anne "Auntie Anne" Haywood

Name: Anne “Auntie Anne” Haywood
Occupation: Freed enslaved American; teacher

Hometown: Charles City, Virginia
Birth: app. 1847
Death: May 15, 1927
Spouse: Stanley Haywood

Date of Picture: 1864

Bio: Ironically, former enslaved American Anne was called “Auntie Anne” as early as thirteen. That’s when she was tasked to help take care of newly born Susannah Carden in 1860. All lived on a tobacco farm in Charles City, Virginia, then owned by Jeff Carden.

Anne was born to parents known only as Noah and Sarah. Some of her early playmates included Jeff and Abigail’s sons John and Maxwell, that is until Anne was old enough to contribute to the household herself, which was around the age of seven. Because of her young age, she worked primarily in the house or kitchen garden with Abigail Carden until the birth of Susannah, then taking on duties of a nursemaid. At critical times during the planting season, which lasted 11 months during the year, all hands were necessary in the fields or in the barn, so Anne was occasionally called to work in the fields as well.

Anne may have found her way into the Carden household early due to her mother’s death during childbirth. Her father was a trusted hand and the recognized leader of the enslaved Americans on the farm. Although finding it difficult to leave her father and the only house she had ever known, Anne moved to Richmond in 1864 with Abigail Carden after the death of Abigail’s husband Jeff. She was to care for little Susannah, who was then only two years old.

The end of the war brought many changes, especially for Anne. In 1868, Abigail Carden sought and won a scholarship for Anne to attend a newly opened school for freed slaves in order to obtain a more formal education begun in those early days on the tobacco farm in Charles City. Because of her great academic success, Abigail was selected to become a teacher and was one of the first African-American teachers in one of the schools now opening across the South to educate former slaves and their children.

Anne met and married Stanly Haywood, another teacher, and the two had successful careers educating children. Anne was never able to reconnect with her father, Noah, after the war likely because of her father’s limited ability to read and write. She did select the name Noah for her first child in honor of her father.