April 15th Maria Branwell (Brontë) - (Birth)

Maria Branwell (1783 – 1821) is world famous as the mother of Emily, Anne, Charlotte and Branwell Brontë.  What is less well known is that was born and brought up in Penzance (at No. 25 Chapel Street), the daughter of a successful merchant and alleged smuggler, Thomas Branwell, and Anne Carn. The house is unusual for West Cornwall in that it is brick built and it has been suggested that it was constructed from the cargo of a wrecked Dutch transport.

Branwell’s family were prominent Methodists: her aunt and two of her sisters married Methodist ministers and her family were instrumental in the construction of the first Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Penzance.

Between 1808 and 1812, both of Maria’s parents and her aunt died and she spent time with a paternal aunt, Jane Fennell, in Yorkshire managing the household of a Methodist training school.   It was through her aunt’s husband that she met Patrick Brontë and they were married within a year.  On that same day, her younger sister, Charlotte, married her cousin, Joseph Branwell, at Madron Church.

In 1820, the Brontës moved to Haworth but, tragically, Maria died of ovarian cancer when their youngest daughter, Anne, was only twenty months old.   Maria’s sister, Elizabeth, moved to Haworth to care for the children of Maria and Patrick.

 

 

   
 
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