Anne Snowden Wildman Dyer, known to her family and friends as Anna, was born on 7 July 1895 in Leesburg, Virginia, the daughter of Christiana (generally called Christine or Chris) Rogers Wildman (1872-1943) and Robert Bentley Wildman (1849-1934). Both of her parents came from established and well-connected families in Loudoun County. Anna graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1917 and worked for the War Trade Board in Washington, D.C. In 1921 she obtained a teaching certificate and began teaching in the Loudoun County schools.

In early 1921 Anna made an extended trip to Egypt and Europe in the company of a college friend and her friend's mother. She made three more long trips to Europe in 1923, 1925, and in 1928. Her letters to her parents recount the first trip in considerable detail, and she kept diaries of all of the trips as well as taking extensive photographs.

In 1932 she married Archibald Murray Dyer (1907-1970), an English journalist and author. Dyer was born in Tokyo, Japan and came to the United States in 1929. He became a U.S. citizen in 1937. The couple lived first in New York, where he worked as a writer for CBS and NBC. He published one novel about Japan, The Bridge of Heaven, and wrote an unpublished novel titled The Lonely Command. They later moved to Leesburg to the home where Anna grew up on Edwards Ferry Road. They shared the house with Anna's sister, Christine Clagett Wildman (1898-1958). Murray Dyer died June 4, 1970 and Anna Dyer died on August 25, 1973.