Find-A-Grave contributor,Jane Harriss Naus, provided the following information:

Annie Ruffin Ashe was born 1840 in Wadesboro, Anson County, NC, the 2nd of 9 known surviving children (3 boys/6 girls) born to Superior Court Judge Thomas Samuel Ashe and his wife, Caroline Attilia Burgwin. Her father was born in Orange County, NC but removed to Hale County, AL in about 1820 when his family relocated there. He returned to NC for his education and received early training at Bingham's Academy in Hillsborough, then the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1832. He was admitted to the bar in 1834 and began to practice law in Wadesboro in 1835 and remained there until his death.

She was the paternal grandchild of Pasquale Paoli Ashe and Elizabeth "Eliza Jane" Shepperd Strudwick of Wilmington, NC who removed to Hale Co, Alabama ca. 1820; and gr-gr-grandchild of NC Gov. Samuel Swann Ashe and his (2nd) wife Elizabeth Jones; and a direct descendant of this family's patriarch John Baptista Ashe (1690-1734) who immigrated to Bath, NC area from England in the early 1700's. On her mother's side, she was the maternal grandchild of wealthy planter George G. B. Burgwyn & Maria Nash of "The Hermitage" plantation in Wilmington, NC.

Annie was 20 years old on November 20, 1860 when she married 25-year old lawyer Richard Henry Battle of Raleigh, who had come to Wadesboro to study law under her father.
The young couple set up housekeeping in Wadesboro where her husband hung his shingle for the first time, and where their first two children were born.

Annie and Richard would eventually become parents to 10 known children, 3 of whom died early on: Lucy Plummer Battle (1861-1905), Samuel Ashe Battle (1863-1865), Lewis Junius Battle (1865), Caroline Burgwyn Battle (1867-1880), Richard Henry Battle, Jr. (1869-1880), Annie Ashe Battle (1871-1873), Edmund Strudwick Ashe Battle (c. 1873), Charles Phillip Battle (1875-1877), Rosa A. Battle (1879), and William Kemp Battle (1880-1905).

Civil War interrupted the married life of the young couple, as Richard enlisted in the CSA serving as Captain and Quartermaster of his regiment. In September, 1862, he resigned his commission to become a private secretary to Governor-elect Zebulon Vance, and the family removed to Raleigh.

After the war her husband resumed his law practice and was active in political and civic life, including service in the state legislature in 1911, and on the Board of Trustees of UNC from 1879 to 1912. In 1895 the University conferred on him an LLD.

Annie died in 1883 at the young age of 43. Her husband of 23 years never remarried and survived her 29 years, passing in 1912 at age 76.

Two of her surviving sons lived to have children. Son, Lewis Junius Battle, married Ida Mae Polkinhorn and was a prominent doctor in Washington, DC and father of 3 children. He died there in 1948 and is believed to be buried in Glenwood Cemetery. Son Edwin Battle married Della Clark of Tarboro, NC and was a lawyer in Raleigh, and was father to 2 surviving children. It is not known where he is buried.

Of her surviving daughters, Lucy married Prof. Collier Cobb of Wayne Co, and lived in Chapel Hill. She was mother to 1 known child, but she died young in 1905 and her husband later remarried. Caroline married William Morrison Stitt and was mother to 1 child, but she too died young in 1889 and is believed to be buried in Charlotte, NC. Daughter, Rosa Ashe, married Dr. Robert Bascom Miller of Goldsboro and was mother to 1 child. Rosa died in 1962 and is buried in Willow Dale cemetery in Goldsboro.