December 7, 1847 [Worcester, Massachusetts]–April, 1916 [Los Angeles]
Cheney was born Anna Elizabeth Skinner in Worcester, Massachusetts. She married William Atwell Cheney in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1871 and moved to California in 1875, eventually settling in Los Angeles in 1882. William Cheney an active State Senator representing Plumas, Butte and Lassen counties and judge in the Superior Court of California. William Cheney was interested in speculative philosophy — these interest resonate throughout his wife’s poetry — and published a book titled Can We Be Sure of Mortality? The inscription on Annie Cheney’s tombstone in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery reads: “There Are No Dead. A Poet, A Philosopher, and a Great Soul.”
