First cousin of William Johnson Temple, who she married on August 6, 1767, at Holy Trinity Church in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Daughter of William Stow (ca. 1692-1753)1 and Mary, nee Mow (1712-1768).
- 1William Stow was firstly married to Anne Blake (1705-ca. 1732) with whom he had two children, both of whom died in infancy. In or before 1736 he married Mary Lundie, nee Mow, with whom he had five children, one of them being Anne Stow. In 1744 he assumed the name of Lundie, becoming William Stow Lundie. In 1745 he became Mayor of Berwick-upon-Tweed, a position which he held until 1750 when he was succeeded by William Temple, the father of Wm. Johnson Temple. He died in 1753
Boswell seems to have met Anne for the first time in Berwick-upon-Tweed in March or April of 1766, on his way from London to Scotland. Apparently, as was the custom, Boswell had sent a visiting-card to Anne in advance. The card was received by Anne's older sister Isabel who "had burned it in front of the boy who delivered it."1 . In a letter which Boswell sent to Temple on May 17, 1766, he wrote of Anne (generally referred to as Nancy) that "[a]fter having seen your lovely Nancy, who upon honour looked so sour that I suspected she was the elder sister, instead of giving you a spirited admonition to have nothing to do with her, I indolently thought: let him please himself." Earlier in that same letter he also seems to refer to Anne when we wrote that "she has an old look, an auntish wisdom, awkward manners, and I imagine a narrow heart. She would grudge me coffee."
He referred to her, somewhat enigmatically, as Celia "who at Berwick deigns to dwell"2 in a letter to Temple dated April 28, 1766.
- 1According to a note by the editors in the 1st edition of Boswell in Search of a Wife
- 2 A reference to an obscure poem by poet Percival Stockdale