NEWS
from Chattanooga’s Houston Museum of Decorative Arts
201 High Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37405

NEW BOOK REVEALS THE ASTONISHING LIFE STORY
OF FOUNDER OF CHATTANOOGA’S HOUSTON MUSEUM

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee -- She was called “Crazy Annie,” was married to at least nine different husbands (probably more) and lived the latter part of her life in virtual poverty, while putting together a collection of antique glass, porcelain and pottery that has been called the finest of its kind in the world.

Now a new book details for the first time the life, legend and legacy of Anna Safley Houston, whose collections are on public display in Chattanooga’s Houston Museum of Decorative Arts in the city’s Arts District, on a hill overlooking the Tennessee River near downtown.

The biography is entitled Always Paddle Your Own Canoe, a line written in 1901 in her memory book. The complete passage, “Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe,” seems to sum up the life of this extraordinary woman.

The book was researched and written for the museum, a not-for-profit institution, by Tom Williams, a former newspaper reporter and now an advertising and public relations writer, whose articles have appeared in a number of national publications.

All proceeds from sales of the book go to support the museum and its educational work.

The book reveals how Anna May Safley, a red-haired country girl from a poor Arkansas family, was a pioneer of women’s roles in business. She traveled the country as a buyer and later a sales person, eventually opening a highly successful millinery shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and acquiring a number of rental properties.

But in addition to her business career she was busy searching through all the then 48 states for rare pieces for her antique collections.

Nineteen-twenty was the year when she became a dealer in antiques and also the year she embarked on either her eighth or ninth marriage. She wed a man named Houston, whom she later divorced, but whose name she decided to keep after divorcing a subsequent husband.

The depression of the 1930s took everything Anna had except her collection, and to escape creditors she moved her treasures away from the city to a huge, ugly, rambling barn-like structure she built with her own hands.

She lived there the rest of her life, with little heat in winter, no indoor plumbing and only occasional food, brought by friends who worried about her. But she still dealt in antiques and became a nationally-known expert, consulted both by collectors and by editors of antiques publications.

And she continued to add to her collection, although no one yet has found a satisfactory answer to how she managed to accumulate antiques now valued at so many millions of dollars the trustees who oversee the collection will not even discuss a figure for publication.

Her reputation as an “eccentric collector of ancient junk” probably caused Chattanooga’s city fathers to flatly refuse her offer to will her collection to the city. And until her death few people were aware of the tremendous assortment of rare pieces her ramshackle old building contained. Her own inventory showed 15,000 pitchers, unquestionably the largest collection in the world.

At her death in 1951, her collection was left to six trustees. But it was not until a decade later, after dedicated volunteers had spent several years sorting through the old building’s contents and discovering an astounding accumulation of treasures, that a suitable location was acquired where the collection could be put on display.

Always Paddle Your Own Canoe, 160 pages with illustrations, may be ordered for $12.95 plus $2.50 shipping in soft cover and $19.95 plus $2.50 shipping in hard cover from the Houston Museum of Decorative Arts, 201 High Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403. For additional information call Amy Frierson, museum director, at 423-267-7176, or e-mail to houston@chattanooga.net.