Anna Swan was born at Mill Brook, New Annan, Nova Scotia. At birth she weighed. She was the third of 13 children, all of the others being around average height. From birth she grew very quickly. On her fourth birthday she was tall. On her 6th birthday she was measured again, and she stood tall, an inch or two shorter than her mother. On her 11th birthday she stood tall and weighed. By her 15th birthday Bates was tall. She reached her full height three years later. Her feet measured 14.2 inches long. Swan excelled at literature and music and was considered to be very intelligent. She also excelled at her studies of acting, piano and voice. She played Lady Macbeth in one play. At one time, she nearly burned to death when Barnum's museum was destroyed by fire. The stairs were in flames and she was too large to escape through a window. She did get help and escaped safely. She normally weighed and her highest weight was. When visiting a circus in Halifax with which Martin Van Buren Bates — another enormously tall person — was travelling, Swan was spotted by the promoter and hired on the spot. The giant couple became a touring sensation and eventually fell in love and, on June 17, 1871, in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, they married. In 1872, Bates and her husband purchased of land and had furniture made to their specifications. Martin supervised the construction of the house. The main part of the house had ceilings, while the doors were extra wide and were tall. The back part of the house was built an average size for servants and guests. Bates conceived two children with Martin. The first was a girl born on May 19, 1872; she weighed and died at birth. While touring in the summer of 1878, Anna was pregnant for the second time. The baby was born on January 18, 1879, and survived only 11 hours. He was the largest newborn ever recorded, at 23 pounds 9 ounces and nearly 30 inches tall ; each of his feet was six inches long. For this he was posthumously awarded a Guinness World Record. The Bateses resumed touring with the W.W. Cole Circus in the summer of 1879, and again in the spring of 1880. Bates spent her remaining years quietly on the farm that she and her husband owned. She had joined the local Baptist Church in 1877 and attended services with her husband. Bates died suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep at her home on August 5, 1888, one day before her 42nd birthday.
