Anna Gertrude Van Alstyne (b. Vedder) (1847-1922) was born in New York, and died in Troy, New York. She grew up in Catskill, New York. Around 1880 she married Richard B. Van Alstyne, and they resided in Troy. He was a Civil War veteran who served as a second lieutenant in Company D, 44th New York Infantry, and a first lieutenant in Company F, 169th New York Infantry. After the war he was a wholesale paper dealer. He died in 1884, and Van Alstyne became the keeper of a rooming house. In 1887 and 1888 she wrote to Mary Baker Eddy to order pamphlets on Christian Science.

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