Anna Maria Truter


Anna Maria Truter, Lady Barrow was a Cape Colony botanical artist. By the time she left the Cape in 1803, she had assembled the first known portfolio of Cape flower studies and landscapes. Her husband, Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, became Second Secretary to the Admiralty in 1804, and authored An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798.
She was the daughter of Petrus Johannes Truter, an official in the East India Company, a Member of the Court of Justice, and a Commissioner of Police, who was married on 18 April 1773 to Johanna Ernestina Blankenberg.
Anna Maria Truter and John Barrow had seven children:
  1. George, who died aged 2 months
  2. George Barrow , with his father one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society, distinguished author and traveller. He married Rosamond Hester Elizabeth Pennell Croker, a celebrated beauty, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and a favourite of George IV and his court. She bore George Barrow eight children.
  3. John Barrow, Lt. Col. V.D., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., F.S.A., Chipping, Norton, Oxfordshire. Archivist to the Admiralty.
  4. William Barrow, Commander
  5. Peter Barrow, Consul of Nantes and later Kertch.
  6. Johanna Maria, married in 1821 to Robert Batty of the Grenadier Guards, later a Lt. Col. Served in the Pyrenees and later at Waterloo where he was wounded. An artist, exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1813 and 1848, died 20 April 1848, Ampthill Square, London, aged 57 years.
  7. Mary Jane, unmarried.