Grandma Moses

  b. 1860; d. 1961 | American artist

At The Bottom

— 1927

Anna Moses continued to labor each day even as her hands began to show the signs of arthritis.

Anna Moses, a 67-year-old farm wife from upstate New York, had just buried her husband, Thomas, a former farm worker to whom she’d been married for 40 years.  Coming from a poor family, Moses had worked hard all her life, first as a farmhand and then as a tenant farmer with Thomas in Virginia, where they lived for about 16 years during the late 19th century.  The Moses family was no stranger to heartbreak during their days, as Anna and Thomas watched five of their ten children die.  After their farmhouse burned down in 1905, they returned to New York and established a small dairy farm, which brought them a modest income but took its toll on the bodies of Anna and Thomas.  Thomas Moses worked until the day he died of a heart attack, while Anna Moses continued to labor each day even as her hands began to show the signs of arthritis.  Several of her children remained on the farm to help with the daily routine, but at her age — and with American farmers experiencing a long period of hard times preceding the Great Depression — Anna Moses faced an uncertain future.