Obituary of Margaret Ann Sanders

Margaret Ann Beal Sanders was born in West Palm Beach on February 5th, 1927, the only child of Fannie Edna Nesbit Beal and Robert Murray Beal. Her infancy and early childhood were spent on a farm outside Waxhaw, NC, and her later childhood and teen years in Richmond, VA, after her mother married Raymond Cottrell Hooker.

She graduated from John Marshall High School in 1944 and attended Meredith College, where she met the love of her life, John L. Sanders in 1944. They married in 1954 and spent almost all their married life in Chapel Hill, NC. Ann had a lifelong interest in art and art history and was one of the first employees of the Hall of History, now the NC Museum of History.

Ann and John were married for 67 years until he died in 2021.  Ann Sanders died peacefully July 4th, 2023 in Chapel Hill of natural causes.  Her three children survive her: Tracy Elizabeth Sanders Justus (Thomas Justus, dec.), Jane Nesbit Sanders (Howard Goldstein, dec.), William Hardy Sanders (Emma Jackson-Sanders), and one grandchild, Hugh Francis Goldstein.

The funeral will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the NC State Capitol Foundation.