Anna Carton

Anna Tardin Carton was born in Yugoslavia on August 18, 1935, to a German father and Hungarian mother. During World War II, when she was just nine years old, her father was conscripted by German forces and later listed as missing in action in what is now Bosnia. Her mother was taken to a Russian concentration camp, leaving Anna to fend for herself, begging for food after her grandfather died and her two brothers fled to Germany. After a year alone, she was reunited with her mother and spent eighteen months in the camp with her. The family eventually escaped with the help of the underground, traveling at night with a group of sixty, hiding in corn fields by day and surviving on raw corn and water from cattle troughs. They crossed into Hungary, then Austria, where Anna was reunited with her brothers. Eighteen months later, they immigrated to the United States as refugees aboard the troop carrier USS Hanselman.

In America, Anna met John Louis Carton when his request through Catholic Relief Services for a family to work for him was filled by her family after the originally selected family’s children contracted measles. Following a brief courtship, the couple married. Anna became a U.S. citizen after studying American history and the Constitution. She raised five children with dedication and skill, working as an exceptional seamstress who made most of their clothing through high school, a talent inherited from her father, a tailor. She also sewed three of her daughters’ wedding dresses.

Anna passed away on March 6, 2026. She was preceded in death by her husband, John Louis Carton. She is survived by her children, Mary Carton, Joseph Carton, Rose Carton Mulqueeny (Dennis), Elizabeth Carton Thompson (Lonnie), and Linda Carton Simmons (Steve); and her grandchildren, Amanda Thompson Shirah (Shaun), Tony Thompson, David Mulqueeny (Cecy), April Mulqueeny, and Laura Simmons.