Johnston, Annie Fellows (1863–1931)

American writer. Born on May 15, 1863, in Evansville, Indiana; died in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, on October 5, 1931; daughter of Albion Fellows (a Methodist minister) and Mary (Erskine) Fellows; older sister ofAlbion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933); attended University of Iowa for one year (1881–82); married William L. Johnston, in October 1888 (died 1892); children: three stepchildren.

With the death of her husband Albion Fellows, a Methodist minister, Mary Erskine Fellows took her three daughters, including two-year-old Annie and her baby sister Albion, to live in the tiny country town of McCutchanville, Indiana, where they grew up with their ten cousins. Annie attended the district school, wrote stories and poems, read through the Sunday School library, and became a teacher in the public schools of Evanston.

After traveling in New England and Europe, the 25-year-old Annie married her cousin William L. Johnston, a widower with three children, in a double ceremony with her sister Albion who married Hilary E. Bacon. Three years later, William Johnston died; Annie Fellows Johnston was now a widow with three stepchildren. Fortunately, throughout the years, Johnston had continued to dabble at writing and had sold stories to Youth's Companion. With a household to sup port, she turned seriously to her hobby. By 1894, she had published Big Brother; in 1895, she added Joel: A Boy of Galilee.

During a visit to Pewee Valley, near Louisville, Kentucky, where her children had relatives, Johnston chanced upon a small girl who had the temperament of her Confederate colonel grandfather. Enchanted by the antebellum atmosphere of the South at the turn of the century, Annie returned home and wrote the first of her popular 12-volume series of The Little Colonel (1896). All told, Johnston would write over 50 books; her output sold over 1 million copies.

From 1901 to 1910, in the hopes of a finding a better climate for an ailing stepson, she moved her brood to Arizona, then to California and Texas. After her stepson's death in 1910, she settled in Pewee Valley and lived there the rest of her life.

suggested reading:

Johnston, Annie Fellows. The Land of the Little Colonel: Reminiscence and Autobiography. 1929.

related media:

The Little Colonel was filmed by 20th-Century Fox in 1935 and starred Shirley Temple (Black) , Lionel Barrymore, Hattie McDaniel , and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.