Harriet Louise Ostrander (1856-1947)

Harriet Louise Ostrander was a school teacher in New York and Virginia, and later assisted in running a farm in Norfolk, Virginia. She was the wife of Abram Cline Ostrander, a Norfolk, Virginia farmer who hosted the scientist and inventor George Poe in the early part of the 20th century.

Biography
Harriet Ostrander was born on April 15, 1856 on a plantation near Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, where her father, Louis F. Ostrander was Superintendent. She attended public schools until her early teenage years, when she was sent to boarding schools at The Female Academy, Utica, New York, and the New York Academy, for the purposes of becoming a teacher. After graduation, she followed a teaching career until her marriage in 1875.

She married her first cousin, Abram Cline Ostrander (September 12, 1843 - October 2, 1914) at the East Greenbush Reformed Dutch Church, in Schodack, New York, in 1875.

She was particularly skilled in mathematics and language arts, acting as a mathematics tutor even after she left her teaching career. She was a native speaker of both English and Dutch, and also spoke German. She was reasonably proficient in Russian, as well.

She died November 6, 1947, at her home in Norfolk County, Virginia, and interred next to her husband at Riverside Cemetery, Norfolk, Virginia.