Thorne women
Annie was the illegitimate daughter of Jane Thorne (1802-1867), an English working-class spinster. Raised as an only child in Oxford, she and her mother were close with extended family and traveled with a group of cousins to America. They sailed on the Horizon in 1856; the company suffered a great deal crossing the plains late in the fall, arriving in Salt Lake in December of that year. Jane was 52 at the time of the journey, and she and Annie both married men they met in Utah. However, Jane moved south to St. George, Utah, with Annie's family only a few years later, leaving her new husband Richard Golightly behind in Salt Lake. Interestingly, Jane made herself a few years younger in America by adjusting her birth date forward on documents there. Annie and her husband Stephen Wells had eight children, and later as an aged widow Annie went blind and lived with her son's family. She died after her dress caught fire by an open fireplace.
