Anna Pustowójtówna was the daughter of a Polish noblewoman and a Russian general. In 1861 she organised an anti-Russian demonstration in Lublin, and two years later she took part in fighting in the January Uprising. After its collapse, she emigrated to France, where, as a nurse, she helped wounded soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871.

Anna Henryka Pustowójtówna was born on 26 July 1838 in Wierzchowiska (10 km east of Lublin) in Polish territory under the Russian partition. Her father Trofim Pustowojtow was an officer in the Russian army and her mother Marianna, née Kossakowska, was a Polish noblewoman. Anna was brought up in her grandmother’s home in Polish patriotism. She was educated at the school of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary in Lublin, and later at the Institute for the Education of Ladies in Puławy. In August 1861, she became the main organiser of an anti-Russian patriotic demonstration in Lublin. For this activity she was sentenced to imprisonment in an Orthodox monastery with a strict rule. Fortunately for her, she managed to escape from the Russian territory and through Austria reached the territory of present-day Romania.

Upon hearing of the outbreak of the January Uprising in 1863, she made her way to Poland and joined the uprising troops, assuming the pseudonym ‘Michal Smok’. She was appointed adjutant to one of the commanders, Dionysius Czachowski, and then to General Marian Langiewicz. She personally took part in many battles against the Russians, particularly showing her courage in the battle of Małogoszcz on 24 February 1863.

In March 1863, together with General Langiewicz, she arrived in Kraków and was arrested by the Austrian authorities. After her release, she settled in Prague, later in Switzerland, and finally in Paris. In 1870 she took part as a nurse in the German-Prussian War, and also dressed the wounded during the fighting in the Paris Commune in 1871. In France, in 1873, she married the Polish physician Stanisław Henryk Loewenhard, also a January insurgent, whom she had met earlier in Langiewicz’s squad.

Anna Pustowójtówna died on 2 May 1881, leaving four children. She was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.