Anne Kennett Farrar Werner-Bates

Friends and family were honoring the memory of Anne Kennett Farrar Desloge Werner Bates today. Bates had a stroke several years ago and died Monday at home on the family estate in north St. Louis County. She was 84.

Bates' great-grandfather, Firmin Renee Desloge, emigrated from France in 1823 and created the family fortune in lead mining in Missouri's old Lead Belt. The town of Desloge, Mo., is named after them.

Her parents, Joseph and Anne Farrar Desloge, helped found Firmin Desloge Hospital, which is now St. Louis University Hospital, and donated the land for Johnson's Shut-In State Park.

Bates was the 1946 Veiled Prophet queen, and her wedding in February 1949 to Louis Werner II was described on the society page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as "the most important wedding of the late winter season." Her husband was killed in a plane crash in Idaho during a hunting trip in 1966.

She married William Maffitt Bates Jr. in 1979. His great-great grandmother was Marie Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, matriarch of St. Louis. William Maffitt Bates died in 1997.

Anne Bates was an avid equestrian and a founding member of the Bridlespur Hunt. Among her survivors are four children -- Elise Crosby, Anne Werner, Louis Werner and Peter Werner -- all of the north county estate; and nine grandchildren. Burial will be private. Memorials can be made to the Humane Society of Missouri or the Old St. Ferdinand Shrine, site of her wedding in 1949.

STL Today 12/8/2010

Read more about the Desloge Family.