SAVAGE, Mrs Richard Henry (Anna Josephine Scheible)

The sitter came from Berlin, Germany, and was married to Colonel Richard Henry Savage at the German Embassy in Washington D.C. on January 2, 1873, Baron Schloezer, the German Minister, giving her away. She came from an aristocratic family – her father having been a court chamberlain in Germany – and when she died the New York Times stated that as a little girl she had held the future Kaiser Wilhelm II in her arms many times. She was actually a widow three years older than Colonel Savage when she married him, who had arrived in war-torn America in 1864 with her first husband, Gustav, whom she had married aged 16, to look after family-owned land in Georgia. Gustav Scheible died in 1866 and Anna became a favorite of Washington society. Her marriage to Savage produced one daughter, who later married Anatol de Carriere, a minor nobleman and an Imperial Russian Councillor of State. She became interested in the issue of women’s suffrage. She died at 28 West 63rd Street on July 7, 1910.

Her husband, Colonel Richard Henry Savage, was born in Utica, New York on June 12, 1846 and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1868. He served as a military engineer, but between 1874 and 1884 he was an author and lawyer in New York. He travelled in Turkey, Asia Minor, Russia, Siberia, Korea, Chine, Japan, Honduras between 1884 and 1891. He returned to the army as a member of the United States Voluntary Engineers during the Spanish American War and as a Major in Havana hoisted the first American flag in Havana in November 1898. Amongst his books were In the Old Chateau and His Cuban Sweetheart (1896) and Poems (1900). He died in October 11, 1903.