Anne Allegra, the last child of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances (Fanny) Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow, was born November 8, 1855. Though her parents named her for Henry’s sister Anne Longfellow Pierce, combined with the Italian word for “happy,” she was often called “Annie.” After her mother’s death in 1861, her sisters began to affectionately call her “Pansy” derived from the Italian word for pensive (penserosa), a play on “Allegra” (happy). They would use this name for the rest of her life. She was under six years of age when her mother died. Hannah Davie, the governess who took over the care of the family’s younger children in 1862, taught her as well as her sister Edith. Her father, faced with raising the girls as a single parent, took special care of the girls, and they grew exceptionally close to him: when faced with his departure to Niagara Falls in May of 1862, Annie “cries about it, and clings round my neck and begs me not to go so pathetically, that if I could I would give up the journey and stay quietly at home.”1 As in the case of her sister Edith, she probably took classes outside the home as a teenager. 
She and her sister Alice attended the Harvard Annex in 1879, the first year in its existence. Annie assisted her father with dictation in literary and legal matters during his periods of poor health until his death on March 24, 1882. In 1882 she oversaw publication of poems about horses she had compiled, In the Saddle. From 1883 to 1884, she and Alice undertook another educational adventure by studying at Cambridge University’s Newnham College, one of the first women’s colleges at England. In 1884 she became engaged to Joseph Gilbert Thorp, Jr. during a trip to Norway with his family and Alice. Annie’s uncle, Reverend Samuel Longfellow performed their 1885 wedding ceremony which was follow by a reception at Craigie House hosted by her sister Alice. Annie and Joseph commissioned her cousin, Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr. to design their home at 115 Brattle Street, two houses down from her childhood home of 105 Brattle. The couple raised five daughters in this home: Alice Allegra, Amelia Chapman, Erica, Anne Longfellow, and Priscilla Alden. 
The family spent summers at “Ravensthorp,” their home on an island off Mount Desert Island in Maine. Annie maintained a strong interest in the Craigie House and helped entertain at public events there. In 1900, Annie traveled to Ontario, Canada with her sister Alice and nephew Harry Dana as a guest of the Ojibway Indian tribe. She and her husband “always headed every list of those to be ‘counted on’ in any movement” for the public good in Cambridge.2 Her causes included Temperance and education for the underprivileged. Annie traveled to the Southern Educational Conferences in 1903 to 1905 with visits to African American schools. She cared for her husband Joseph in the last years of his life until his death in 1931. An acquaintance remembers her in her last illness: “Lying in bed she still had that look of distinction, and she was so alert, filled with interest in all that concerned the world of which she was still an active member.” Annie outlived all of her siblings, passing away on 28 February 1934. Notes
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Last updated: March 24, 2023