Author: Roe, A. M.
Biography:
ROE, Anna Maria (1759/60-1844: ancestry.com)
Said to have been born in Walsall, Staffordshire, the poet, Anna Maria Roe, is almost certainly the person of that name who was baptized 27 Feb. 1760 at St Mary the Virgin, Uttoxeter (twenty-seven miles from Walsall), a daughter of John Roe and his wife, Joan (Bailey) Roe. Anna Maria’s brother, John, was baptized there in 1757. On 11 Apr. 1785, A. M. Roe, the poet, then resident in Walsall, opened a school “for young LADIES” in the nearby village of Cannock. Having advertised for a “young Lady of good Morals and polite Behaviour, as a teacher,” she formed a business partnership with the “Miss [Ann] Bowlker” (bap. 1761). The subject of several of Roe’s poems, Bowlker became one of the poet’s closest friends. In July 1790, the two women moved Cannock School to West Bromwich where they took over Hill Top School, an institution established by Miss Dutton in 1784. Anna Maria Roe witnessed the Sept. 1792 Birmingham marriage of Ann Bowlker to John Butler. When Roe and Mrs Butler dissolved their partnership by mutual consent on 13 Jan. 1794, the poet immediately reopened the school with Miss Gentleman of Cannock. The poet appears to have retired in or shortly before 1799, for in that year Hill Top School came under the supervision of Miss Punfield. Anna Maria Roe, undoubtedly the poet, died at Wolstanton in Mar. 1844, age 85, and was buried at Burslem. The poet’s Poems on Several Occasions (2 vols), printed at the press of J. Belcher and Son, Birmingham, was published by subscription in Nov. 1807, price 10s. 6d. in boards. Her book’s second volume can be read online. Particularly interesting is the network of female companions documented in her poems and in her book’s subscription list. With several of those friends, she established a Female Club at Hanley. (ancestry.com 15 Apr. 2024; Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 28 Mar. 1785, 11 Jan. 1790, 5 July 1790, 17 Jan. 1791, 16 July 1792, 20 Jan. 1794, 7 July 1800, 30 Nov. 1807, 4 Jan. 1819; Staffordshire Poets, 469) JC
Other Names:
- A. M. Roe