Anna E. Ford was born around 1845 in Georgia to Edward and Theodosia Ford. Her father was a minister who owned $4,000 of personal property by 1860. She grew up and attended school in Augusta, Georgia, and she married Francis M. Hight on November 26, 1868. Her husband was a Confederate veteran who had been convicted of murdering a Freedmen’s Bureau agent in August 1865. He had been sentenced to hang, but President Andrew Johnson had issued a pardon. The couple lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before moving to Anniston, Alabama, around 1881. Her husband worked as general manager of the Woodstock Iron and Steel Company, and he served four terms as mayor of Anniston. Her health deteriorated in the early 1890s, and she travelled back to Augusta “in hope that its genial climate and…skilled physicians might benefit her declining health.” Their efforts, however, were unsuccessful, and she died in Augusta on March 27, 1891.

SOURCES