Anna Lloyd Jones Wright

July 25, 1838 - February 10, 1923

Anna (Lloyd) Jones, the fifth of the children born to Richard and Mallie in Wales, came into this world July 25, 1838. She was born in Llandysul, Wales and made the difficult passage from New Quay to America at just over six years of age. (In her reminiscences, Anna said she was ten, but the dates don’t match.)

Born “Anna” according to the family Bible, she was called “Hannah” for much of her youth.

We all know at least something about Anna. We've heard the family stories of how she was a young school teacher who was employed as “nanny” by widower William Carey Wright in order to tend to his three children. The employment led to romance, to marriage, and to the birth of three children of their own, the eldest of whom consumed his mother’s passions and ambitions for decades to come. It was sometime during this period that the woman then known as “Hannah” changed her name to “Anna.” Wisconsin historian Mary Jane Hamilton sites the Thomas Diaries at the time of the Wrights’ marriage (1866) as reflecting the name change.

But what was Anna Lloyd Jones Wright really LIKE?

This late portrait shows a woman of proud carriage, elegance, and a gimlet gaze. There is no softness about her. Intellect, drive and determination stiffen her spine and resonate through those proud, critical eyes. The word “indomitable” comes to mind.

And yet, about the same time this portrait was made, she was writing lyrically, even euphorically, about her childhood in Ixonia. (See “Anna’s Reminiscences.”)  

The two “Annas” are hard to reconcile. This was not an easy woman to know.

In some tales she is the wicked stepmother of fairy tales, striking her stepchildren or threatening them with violence. (We Lloyd Joneses have always questioned the truth of those stories.) But there is no question that there were trials in Anna’s life to which she responded with quick firmness and decisiveness.

Cousin Jix (Richard Lloyd Jones, Enos line) offers this insight into Anna's character: “She must have been a very complicated woman in the midst of a complicated family. Her firsthand memories of Wales must have been faint or nonexistent, but she might well have remembered the trip across the ocean in a sailing ship and up the Erie Canal in the dead of winter. Ixonia, Wisconsin must have been a primitive place for a little girl. She'd have reached womanhood in the middle of Richard's problems with his church as described by Tom Graham (Thomas line), and then she would have moved to Spring Green with the tribal travels. That's a testing sort of youth.”

William Carey Wright, the gifted dreamer Anna married, was never a gifted provider, and when confronted by acrimonious accusations from his strong-willed wife, he finally said, “enough,” and walked out the door. Imagine the shock of it—divorce—in an era when divorce was frowned upon by church and society alike! Perhaps this is why Anna thereafter presented herself to the world as a widow.

Money was tight. Times were hard. But the last time Anna’s third-born child, Maginel, saw her father was when he gifted her with cheap but pretty shoes and hat—gifts subsequently consigned to the fire when Maginel returned home. To Anna, “cheap” was an ugly word. Only “quality”—even if worn and threadbare—was acceptable.

Anna’s girls, Jane and Maginel, grew up to be influential women in their worlds. Jane, the elder, stayed at Hillside, teaching, presenting the immensely popular Valley pageants, and mothering her children—one of whom, Franklin Wright Porter, cofounded Unity Chapel, Inc. decades later with his cousins. It was for Jane and her husband Andrew Porter that Tan-y-Deri was built just up the hill from Hillside by Jane’s brother, Frank.

Maginel, meanwhile, was a gifted artist and illustrator whose New York career never lost its nod to the simplicity and charm of her Valley-inspired illustrations.

Yet beyond doubt Frank was the favored child—he inherited his mother's strong will and his father’s escapism. Over his mother's strongest objections, he left college without a degree. Indeed, he surreptitiously sold precious books belonging to his father to finance his escape to Chicago. Frank was destined to try his Lloyd Jones mother's sense of rectitude and propriety time and again—and yet he was also the product of her intense devotion and love.

It is hard to imagine how Anna would, or could, explain to her God-almighty siblings the peripatetic ramblings and romances of her brilliant, somewhat out of control son, for the family did suffer from Cousin Frank’s behavior. The demise of the hugely successful Hillside Home School can be, in part, laid at his feet. There were many other reasons for its demise, but undoubtedly parents did not want their innocent children exposed to the amorous actions of the later Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin.

And yet . . .

It was Anna who bought the land upon which Taliesin was later built. It was Anna who fainted at Frank’s wedding to youthful Catherine Tobin—a marriage she decried—and which, six children later, was destined to dissolve. Many years later, when Frank Lloyd Wright was seriously ill in Japan, it was Anna he longed to see, and it was Anna who responded—at the age of more than eighty years—crossing the seas, venturing to an unfamiliar land, tending to the convalescence of a beloved son.

Anna lived 84 years—half of those years at Oak Park where her son’s first home and studio lay. And Anna, being Anna, never lacked for interests and occupations.

The Unity magazine of March 29, 1923, quoted the homage of friends after her passing: “She possessed qualities of real leadership. Intellectually keen, independently critical, but deeply appreciative of the best in literature, music, art, and nature, painstaking and uncompromising in the search for truth, she found rare joy in sharing with others the treasures she found in books, in pictures, in melody, and in her beloved out-of-doors.”

Her love of things beautiful manifested itself all along her journey of life. She hated all sham and make-believe and was possessed of a deep curiosity and enthusiasm for the undiscovered realms of truth. She had depths of inner strength, mental vigor, and great courage, so that troubled souls naturally sought the help of her vigorous spirit.

What do we know of Anna? She was more than the mother of a famous man and two expressive, competent, creative women. She was a force, a personality—positive, inflexible, proud, inquisitive, demanding, searching. She made her mark on her world—and her influence marks our world as well.