Dr. Anne L. Barstow was a historian, a deeply committed feminist and peace activist, an educator, and a beloved family member, friend, and colleague.

Anne was the only child of Lewington Stanley Barstow and Thelma Hyers Barstow of Palatka, FL, where Anne grew up. Her mother was a secretary and ran a boarding house; her father was an administrator with local public school systems. He was also a talented pitcher with the Palatka Pals. Anne would share his love of baseball, eventually becoming an avid Mets fan. She enjoyed weekends at the family’s lake house and treasured their annual vacations at “Aunt” Sallie’s farm, in Hendersonville, NC, now the Historic Johnson Farm heritage museum.

During Anne’s childhood, her maternal grandmother lived periodically on Long Island and in Brooklyn. Memorable visits there and to the World’s Fair in 1939 and 1940 ignited two lifelong passions: for New York City and for seeing the world. After two years at Duke University, Anne finished college at the University of Florida, then moved to New York to pursue her dream of living in that city, her Masters in Religious Education at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, and her Duke boyfriend, Tom F. Driver. Anne and Tom married in 1952 and went on to share 69 years of marriage, many professional interests and political commitments, religious life, three children, thousands of hands of bridge, a wide-ranging love of travel, and continual conversation. They spent part of their honeymoon at a World Council of Churches work camp in the Netherlands helping to rebuild a church damaged in World War II, the first of Anne’s many trips abroad centered on service and learning. In all, Anne travelled to six continents.

Anne began her professional life in New York as a teacher of young children at Riverside Church and the Nightingale-Bamford School. After a few years’ break when her own children were young, she returned to Columbia University and obtained her PhD in European History. In 1970 she became a professor of history at the State University of New York Old Westbury, a campus committed to teaching nontraditional students and to antiracism and antisexism. A medievalist, Anne was also a women’s studies scholar from the beginnings of that field in the 1970s. Her scholarship focused both on women and religion and on violence against women. It encompassed studies of ancient goddess religions, priestly marriage, the life of Joan of Arc, the European witch hunts, and crimes against women during wartime in the 20th Century. She wrote three books, edited one, and wrote numerous articles. Witchcraze (1995) and War’s Dirty Secret (2000) are still finding audiences.

Anne retired from Old Westbury in 1991 to devote more time to her second career, as a peace activist and nonviolent resister. This volunteer work had roots in meeting Freedom Riders at Duke in 1947, in conversations with German and Dutch people on her honeymoon trip, and in her lifelong religious beliefs. It continued with marching against US involvement in the Vietnam War and protesting nuclear weapons, and blossomed with what she called her “second education” from Witness for Peace in the 1980s. She began joining and then leading trips of witness and advocacy in Latin America and Haiti and joined protests in the US with Witness for Peace, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, School of the Americas Watch, and others. These efforts focused on US involvement in armed conflicts particularly in Nicaragua and Colombia and on solidarity with civilians caught up in the violence and displacement. Anne’s work was key in launching and running the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Accompaniment Program with Colombian churches.

While traveling widely throughout her life, Anne also loved the Berkshires, where she and Tom had a home for some five decades. There she taught her children and grandchildren to play her favorite games — bridge, croquet, and Monopoly— in all of which she competed fiercely and rarely lost. She also enjoyed gardening, serving gin and tonics on the patio, concerts at Tanglewood, and wisely finding time to herself while her husband and children went skiing (she never did come to like the cold northern winters). She was involved with the Women’s Interfaith Institute and, as everywhere she went, many long-term friendships.

In her last years, Anne lived at the Meadow Lakes community in Hightstown, NJ, where she was active in the group Senior Advocates for Justice, joined efforts to pass New Jersey’s medical aid in dying act, gave talks, played and taught bridge, and continued to make friends. She joined the nearby Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church and regularly attended services, continuing to do so on Zoom when she could no longer travel to the church building.

Anne was predeceased by her husband, Tom, and her nephew Graham Driver. She is survived by her children, Kate Driver Murphy (Paul Murphy), Paul Boyd Driver (Rebecca), and Susannah Driver-Barstow (Philip Christopher); by her grandchildren, Dan Abendroth (Rachel), Kevin Murphy, Aidan Murphy, and Grace Barstow-Christopher; by her step-grandchildren, Nils Aspengren (Kayla) and Lena Collins (Zack); by her step-great-grandchildren, Kinsley Collins and Caden Collins; by family friends David Halvorsen and Yvonne Aspengren; and by deeply loved extended family.

Arrangements were under the direction of Simplicity Funeral and Cremation Services at Glackin Chapel, 136 Morrison Ave., Hightstown, NJ.