Biography
The daughter of lawyer William Batchelder and Elizabeth Kennedy, Ann was tutored as a child before attending Bishop Hopkins Hall in Burlington at the age of 10. By 1900 her family had moved to Woodstock, where she explored career options as a teacher, a bank clerk, and a legal assistant. For several years she lived in Springfield working as a reporter for the Springfield Reporter and subsequently took various jobs in journalism, including police reporter for the Boston Herald and Boston Globe. During this period, she also expanded her legal training by “reading the law.”
Batchelder became involved in the suffrage movement in 1917 as publicity chair for the Woodstock Suffrage Study Club. Following the achievement of municipal suffrage for women in Vermont, Batchelder became the first woman in the state to be elected as town grand juror in 1918. She used her legal training to prosecute her first case the next year. During the final campaign to ratify the 19th amendment in Vermont, Batchelder worked closely with organizer Lillian Olzendam of Woodstock. They gathered petitions statewide, educated the public through the press, lobbied legislators, and sought to persuade anti-suffrage Governor Percival W. Clement to call the legislature into special session to approve the amendment, which he refused to do.
Batchelder’s fascination with food and cooking stemmed from her early childhood when she caught and cooked a trout on a fishing trip with her father. She began marketing jams through “Ann’s Jam Kitchen,” in a project launched with Lillian Olzendam in 1917. For several years during the 1920s she operated an inn in Hatfield, MA. before she was hired as a food editor at "The Delineator" magazine in 1928. When the publication ceased operation in 1934, the Curtis Publishing Co. hired Batchelder as associate editor of the "Ladies Home Journal."
Ann, also known as Anna, Batchelder became a household name in the 1930s and 1940s when her popular food articles, recipes, and “Line a Day” tips sparked her celebrity as an American journalist. Writing with considerable spunk and humor about food and daily life, she received an outpouring of mail from Americans eager to share their domestic frustrations while seeking her culinary advice. A spritely writer and lover of poetry, she published several popular books including: "East of Bridgewater and Other Poems" (1943), "Ann Batchelder’s Own Cookbook" (1941), and "Start to Finish" (1954). In 1950, Bowling Green State University awarded Batchelder an honorary degree in recognition of her journalistic career.
During this period, Batchelder wintered in New York City near her office at Rockefeller Center, where her staff multiplied quickly to handle her voluminous correspondence. She returned to her home in Woodstock Village in summer, often speaking locally about her career and her love of Vermont. In 1942 Batchelder broke her hip, which hardly interrupted her career but confined her to a wheelchair for the remainder of her life.
After World War II, Batchelder met and befriended Italian refugee Lisa Sergio, a former interpreter for Mussolini. One of the first women to become a European news commentator, Sergio had joined the National Broadcasting Co.; eventually, she taught international affairs at Columbia University. Her status as an enemy alien prompted Batchelder to adopt Sergio as her daughter. After Sergio was accused of being a “Red Sympathizer” and blacklisted during the McCarthy Era, Batchelder spent the next few years attempting to clear her name. The two women returned permanently to Woodstock in 1952, three years before her death at age 74.Education
Honorary Degree, Bowling Green University (1950)Occupation
Suffragist, Author