Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961) witnessed the evolution of America. She was born two months before Abraham Lincoln was elected and died nearly a full year into the Kennedy administration. She grew up on a farm and remained on a farm. It was the farm life that she was most known for, but predominantly for her representation of it.
Moses lived most of her life in Eagle Bridge, New York, a small town northeast of Albany near the Vermont border. She gave birth to 10 children (only five of whom survived infancy). When her husband, Thomas Moses, died in 1927, her son and daughter-in-law took over the farm. She began to spend her days with needlework, making quilts, and pictures of fun and bright farm scenes. Soon her lifetime of manual labor, however, made this all but impossible as she developed arthritis. In her late 70s, she decided to put away the needle and pick up the paintbrush.
