Annabel Vanscyoc Horward

She was born in Waynesburg, Pa., on December 21, 1933, the daughter of Alva Warren and Mabel McCracken Vanscyoc. She was a descendant of a Scottish family that emigrated from Glasgow to America in 1684 and settled in what became Western Pennsylvania. Annabel was married for sixty-three years to the love of her life, Donald D. Horward of Pittsburgh, who passed away in 2021. She graduated from Waynesburg High School in 1951 and Waynesburg College cum laude in 1955. She taught third grade for three and a half years at the Elementary School at Allison Park, outside Pittsburgh, and three years at the Edina Highland Elementary School in Minneapolis, while her husband was completing his doctorate at the University of Minnesota. In 1961, she accompanied her husband to Tallahassee, where he began a 46-year career at Florida State University. Annabel spent sixty-four years in Tallahassee with summers in Europe or Cedar Point on Lake Erie, Ohio.

For almost sixty years, Annabel was the hostess for hundreds of her husband’s graduate students from Florida State and the US Military Academy, West Point, who attended Bastille Day celebrations, barbeques, banquets, slide shows, and pizza parties at their home each year. She crossed the Atlantic Ocean almost sixty times, traveling for months to almost every European nation, attending academic congresses in Paris, London, Lisbon, Brussels, Berlin, Budapest, Milan, Prague, Moscow, as well as Tehran in Iran.

Annabel was always deeply involved in the publication of her husband’s books, articles, and speeches. She served as the hostess of five international congresses in England, Portugal, and Spain, as well as five Consortiums on Revolutionary Europe at Florida State University, including the massive International Congress on the Bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989.

Annabel was an avid stamp collector for over fifty years, especially of French and Napoleonic stamps, and amassed a large collection as she traveled throughout Europe. She was a member of the National Philatelic Society and the Tallahassee Stamp and Cover Club. As a member of the National Hemerocallis Society, she was dedicated to her daylily gardens in both Tallahassee and Ohio. At Cedar Point, her daylily bed spanned almost 800 feet, stretching from Lake Erie to Sandusky Bay. She is survived by over a hundred FSU doctoral and master’s graduates who were always welcomed to her home under the Great Oak on Great Oak Drive in Tallahassee or Bowman Loop at West Point. She was the foundation of her husband’s career, which dominated Napoleonic studies in the US.

A visitation will be held on January 18, 2026, from 10:00 am to 11:00 am at Culley's MeadowWood Funeral Home, located at 700 Timberlane Road, Tallahassee, Florida, 32312 with funeral services beginning at 11:00 am. Interment will take place at MeadowWood Memorial Park following the service.