Born in Puise, Estonia

Anna Hedvig Büll was born on September 9, 1877, in the small coastal fishing village of Puise in the Läänemaa (Coastal Land) region of what was then part of the Russian Empire, now Estonia. She grew up in a devout Swedish-Estonian family, part of the Estonian-Swedish minority community that had lived along the western coast of Estonia for centuries.

Her upbringing in this remote, religiously observant coastal community would shape the deep Christian faith that later drove her humanitarian work. The hardship and simplicity of life in a fishing village, combined with a strong sense of communal duty and religious devotion, provided the foundation for a woman who would later travel thousands of kilometers from home to devote her life to the rescue of Armenian genocide orphans.

Little historical documentation survives of her earliest childhood, but records confirm her Estonian-Swedish heritage and her family's modest circumstances typical of Baltic coastal communities of the era. This origin as a woman of a small, often-overlooked ethnic minority within the Russian Empire makes her subsequent international humanitarian career and enduring legacy in Armenian memory all the more remarkable.