A recluse for more than a decade before her death in 1903, Anne Drinker’s career as a writer was well on its way to bringing her a lifetime of recognition, yet more than a hundred years after her death, it is very difficult to find even the smallest detail about her. The daughter of Joseph D. and Eleanor (Skyrin) Drinker, she was born in Philadelphia in 1827 and educated there, but spent much of her life in Montrose in Susquehanna county. Writing under the pen name of Edith May, she authored many poems, many of which were published in the Home Journal, a well-known magazine of the time, and she began to acquire a following. The following snippet from The Automobile Tourist gives a sense of her life:

“At Edgemont, the famous home of Ann Drinker may be visited, and some member of the party should be able to tell of her romantic life and the story of her brilliant social career, her misplaced affections upon an unworthy suitor, her confinement in a sanitarium, on the ground that she was insane, by her guardian, who wished to secure possession of her estate; her rescue by her brother, who murdered her guardian. All the thrilling details of the indispensable ghost certain to haunt such homesteads, will provide another series of pleasurable thrills that will prove the main feature of the successful moonlight trip.

For a longer run, and one in keeping with the main thought of the evening, a side trip of five miles may be taken from Edgemont to the pretty little Episcopalian churchyard at Rockdale, where Ann Drinker lies buried, near the grave of her brother Joseph.

A brief review of the tragic end of the life of Joseph Drinker will be in keeping with the thoughts of the evening. Between Ann and her brother Joseph there existed a bond of love and sympathy that stood the strain of a murder and years of confinement in a madhouse. After rescuing Ann from the asylum in which she had been confined - in the blindness of his passion over the wrong - Joseph murdered the crafty guardian who committed the crime. Ann spend the better part of her fortune in the effort to save her brother form the gallows, and in the end she was successful, for the jury rendered a verdict of insanity. When Joseph Drinker was sent to an insane asylum his sister retired from society and lived a recluse during the remainder of her long life. Now that their bodies lie side by side in the little Rockdale Cemetery, the place is frequently visited by the morbidly curious who know their story.”

What is known about her life and that of her brother is the following:

• Her father died in 1881, her mother in 1877 (from the Drinker genealogy)
• Her brother Joseph fatally shot W. H. Cooper, her guardian in June of 1884 (NY Times, 6/24/1884)
• She was released from the asylum at Harrisburg, having been declared sane, in late summer 1885. (NY Times, 9/27/1885)
• Joseph died in 1894 and Anne had him buried at Calvary Episcopal in Rockdale, Aston township.
• Anne died in 1903 and was buried beside her brother, her name added to the headstone for him.

What is not known are the details alluded to in the article quoted, such as the story of her ill-fated love affair, but perhaps those fascinating bits will surface one day.