Anne W. Armstrong

Biography

Armstrong was born Anne Audubon Wetzell in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1872. and later attended the University of Chicago. She had returned to Knoxville by 1892, when she married Leonard T. Waldron. They had one son before divorcing in 1894.

Armstrong published her first novel, The Seas of God, in 1915. In 1918, she was hired as a personnel director for the National City Company of New York. In 1919, Armstrong was hired as the Assistant Manager for Industrial Relations for Eastman Kodak, and continued in this position until 1923.

In the late 1920s, Armstrong retired and moved to the Big Creek community in rural Sullivan County, Tennessee, which would provide the inspiration for her 1930 novel, This Day and Time. Bitter over her father's treatment, she leaves Kingsville, and eventually winds up in New York. An illicit affair with a married man leaves her pregnant, and she gradually sinks into poverty. Unable to find gainful employment, she becomes a prostitute, and while her financial situation drastically improves, she struggles with what she deems a pointless existence.

Armstrong's second novel, This Day and Time, takes place in an early 20th-century rural Appalachian community based primarily on the Big Creek area of Sullivan County, Tennessee.

Armstrong's business writings typically focused on the status of women in the business world. Her 1927 article, "Are Business Women Getting a Square Deal," traces the gradual acceptance of women in the workplace, from the 1880s through the post-World War period. In the 1928 article, "Have Women Changed Business," Armstrong complains that businesswomen have failed to make business more ethical, falling short of goals set forth by women's movement leaders such as Nellie Ross. In "Seven Deadly Sins of Women in Business," she advises women not to try to imitate men in dress and manners, but instead focus on what their feminine nature can bring to the workplace.