Grandparents

Patrick Bronte married Maria BRANWELL in 1812.  Maria was born in 1783 in Penzance, Cornwall, the daughter of Thomas BRANWELL and Anne CARNE. She was one of 12 children, though only six of these survived childhood. Her siblings were Anne (1769-1792), Margaret (1770), Thomas (1771-?), Elisabeth (1772-1772), Jane (1773-1855), Benjamin Carne (1775-1818), Elisabeth (1776-1842), Thomas (1778-1779), Alice (1780-1780s), Margaret (1789) and Charlotte (1791-1848).

Anne CARNE was the wife of Thomas CRANWELL and the maternal grandmother of the Bronte sisters.  The CARNE name is quite numerous in Cornwall, but it seems likely that she is the Anne CARNE who was baptized in Penzance on 27^th April 1744, the daughter of John Carne.  However, I cannot find any definite siblings for her, so any connection to this family would probably be further back.

The family was very successful in the import and export trade, and her father owned a brewery, an inn, and the largest grocers emporium in the town. The close-knit family was broken up by the death of Thomas Branwell in 1808 and of his wife the next year.

The builder of Nr 25 Chapel Street is known;
Richard Branwell and his partner Edward Hamilton in 1767, for Thomas Branwell and daughter-in law Ann (nee Carne),  as a wedding present.

Nr 25 Chapel street, Penzance . Owned and occupied by Thomas Branwell and Ann Carne married 28th November 1768. Thomas died 5th April 1808 age 62; Ann died 19th December 1809 aged 66. Said to have had 11 children, eight girls and three boys, seven of the children survived. The house was empty by 1815.
picturepenzance

 

 

Anne Branwell (Carne)
Datum van Geboorte	1745
Overlijden	Overleden 1809 in Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom
Begraafplaats:	St Mary's Churchyard, Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom geni/people/  Anne-Carne      Minnie's father Francis (Frank) Carne was a Carpenter from Madron in Cornwall, and a descendant of           Henry Carne who was born in 1678  and also lived in Madron.  Henry was Minnie's 4th Great Grandfather.           He was also the Grandfather of Anne Carne born in 1744 who married Thomas Branwell in Penzance theroyalzanettos

Artists, Faith, Methodism and the Brontës

A new art exhibition opens at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The exhibition explores the connections between the Brontës and Methodism. Reverend Patrick Brontë's career was nurtured by John Wesley's friend Thomas Tighe and his wife Maria Branwell's family were devout Methodists from Penzance in Cornwall. Perhaps the most significant connection is that Patrick met his future wife because he was invited to be the examiner for the Wesleyan Methodist Boarding School. Aunt Branwell was a strict Methodist and was a powerful influence in the family's lives. Charlotte Brontë describes the Methodist Magazine as 'mad... full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism' and it is this sense of the supernatural that influenced the Brontës' early writing. Ghosts, apparitions, and supernatural communication are features of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The exhibition has been curated by Nick Cass, a Research Associate in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds who is currently undertaking a research-based PhD on contemporary artistic responses to the Brontës' literary heritage. His selection for Artists of Faith makes thoughtful juxtapositions and reflections on the works. For example, Patrick Heron's Crucifix and Candles, highlights Patrick Brontë's fear of fire and concern for the safety of his family while Graham Sutherland's mediation on sacrifice, Deposition, highlights issues around mortality and loss. Professor Ann Sumner, Executive Director of The Brontë Society comments: "This exhibition coincides with new research on the Wesleyan Methodist Branwell and Carne families in Cornwall by Melissa Hardie-Budden. This summer our visitors will have the opportunity to view these outstanding paintings by major Modern British artists from this little known collection, within the unique setting of the Parsonage. We are delighted to be working with the Methodist Church in partnership for this exhibition as well as the University of Leeds'.Artists, Faith, Methodism and the Brontës

genealogy/Branwell

wiki/Woodhouse_Grove_School

Branwell Family

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY ‘August 14th, 1840.

‘My dear Ellen,—As you only sent me a note, I shall only send you one, and that not out of revenge, but because like you I have but little to say.  The freshest news in our house is that we had, a fortnight ago, a visit from some of our South of England relations, John Branwell and his wife and daughter.  They have been staying above a month with Uncle Fennell at Crosstone.  They reckon to be very grand folks indeed, and 
talk largely—I thought assumingly.  I cannot say I much admired them.  To my eyes there seemed to be an attempt to play the great Mogul down in Yorkshire.  Mr. Branwell was much less assuming than the womenites; he seemed a frank, sagacious kind of man, very tall and vigorous, with a keen active look.  The moment he saw me he exclaimed that I was the very image of my aunt Charlotte.  Mrs. Branwell sets up for being a woman of great talent, tact, and accomplishment.  I thought there was much more noise than work.  My cousin Eliza is a young lady intended by nature to be a bouncing, good-looking girl—art has trained her to be a languishing, affected piece of goods.  I would have been friendly with her, but I could get no talk except about the Low Church, Evangelical clergy, the Millennium, Baptist Noel, botany, and her own conversion.  A mistaken education has utterly spoiled the lass.  Her face tells that she is naturally good-natured, though perhaps indolent.  Her affectations were so utterly out of keeping with her round rosy face and tall bouncing figure, I could hardly refrain from laughing as I watched her.  Write a long letter next time and I’ll write you ditto.  Good-bye.’
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Maria Brontë and Elizabeth Branwell were the daughters of Thomas Branwell, a successful property owner and merchant of Penzance, and his wife Anne, née Carne. The marriage of 1768 seems to have produced eight daughters and three sons, though four of these children died in infancy. Thomas died in 1809, Anne the next year. Among the sisters of Maria and Elizabeth were Anne, Charlotte (who married a Branwell cousin in Penzance on the same day as Maria married Patrick, and who CB was said to resemble), and Jane, who married unhappily a prominent but peccant Methodist preacher, John Kingston. Among the brothers was Benjamin, who became Mayor of Penzance in 1809. Branwell visitors stayed with the Brontës on at least two occasions. In 1840 they were visited by John Branwell Williams and his family, cousins of their aunt, and Charlotte as usual preferred the male to the female – “Mr Williams himself was much less assuming than the womanites” (to EN, 14 Aug 1840?). Thomas Brontë Branwell, son of Charlotte Branwell, visited in September 1851, and Charlotte’s “the coast is now clear” (in a letter to MW, 22 Sep 1851?, proposing a visit) suggests that he wasn’t someone she was anxious her friend should meet.
Penlee house history-of-penlee
family.rootsweb.ancestry branwell 

THE MATERNAL RELATIVES OF THE BRONTËS

By J. Hambley Rowe, M.B., F.S.G.,
Chairman of the Council, Brontë Society.

While much has been written and more conjectured regarding the ancestry of the Brontës on the paternal side, their maternal forbears have been uniformly neglected. This seems the more inexplicable as it is generally considered that the distaff influences are the more important in the moulding of capabilities and temperament. In point of intrinsic interest, also, the history of the mother's family is quite as attractive as that of the father's.
Maria Branwell, who, at Guiseley, on December 29th, 1812, became the wife of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was the daughter of Thomas Branwell and Ann Carne, his wife, both natives of Penance. The Branwells resided in that neighbourhood for two centuries before Thomas Branwell's day, and their name, under the various guises of Bramwell, Bramble and Bromwell, is to be found in the registers of the parishes adjoining Penzance.
The earliest mention of this name that I can trace in Cornwall occurs in the Parish of Sancreed in 1605. A former incumbent of the adjoining parish of Paul, John Trernearne, saw his church in the hands of the Spaniards in 1595, when four of their warships made a raid on the Cornish coast. From him was descended Jane Tremearne, who, on July 2nd, 1705, married Martyn Bremble, presumably the son of John Bromwell, whose marriage to Constance is recorded on March 13th, 1657-8, at Madron.
 Read more: genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry Branwell

15 april 1813 Patrick Bronte for Maria Branwell

Maria, let us walk, and breathe, the morning air,

And hear the cuckoo sing,-

And every tuneful bird, that woos the gentle spring.

Troughout the budding grove,

Softly coos the turtle-dove,

The primrose pale,

perfumes the gale

The modest daisy, and the violet blue,

Inviting, spread their charms for you.

15 april 1813

 Patrick Bronte for Maria Branwell

This day is the birthday of Maria Branwell 15th April 1783

Maria Branwell was born at Penzance, Cornwall.

Maria Branwell was the eighth child of twelve born to Thomas Branwell and Anne Carne in Penzance, Cornwall, though only five daughters and one son grew to adulthood. Thomas Branwell was a successful merchant and owned many properties throughout the town. The Branwell family was involved with local politics, several serving as Mayor in the 19th century and other civic offices. The family were prominent Methodists,Thomas's sister and two of his daughters marrying clergymen of Wesleyan leanings. With the Carne family and others, they initiated and developed the first Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Penzance.

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Branwell Family House

At the seaward end of Chapel Street is Branwell House. This house was the Branwell family home, the mother and aunt of Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell.

This house was built in the 1780s. It has a brick front which has not been painted but kept as a feature. It must remembered that at that time using granite for the facade was considered vulgar. Brick frontage displayed social standing. Having five rooms at each floor,two attic rooms and a south facingwalled garden. The impression one gets of the life there, when Maria and her sisters were young, is of a whirl of social entertainment and visiting of the sort  so vividly discribed by Jane Austin.

St/chapel_Street.

http://st-marys-church.chapelstreet.co.uk/

Maria was petite, plain, pious, intelligent and well read with a ready wit. She made friends easily, and the friends that the Brontë's made in Thornton remained life-long friends to Patrick and his children. Her only extant written work, apart from letters, is the tract, The Advantages of Poverty, In Religious Concerns, but it was never published.

Between 1808 and 1811 four family deaths (including Maria's mother and father) effectively broke up Maria's immediate family and she looked for employment. Her father's sister Jane was the wife of John Fennell, a Methodist minister who, in 1812, was appointed Headmaster of the newly opened Woodhouse Grove School at Rawdon, between Leeds and Bradford in Yorkshire. Jane Fennell acted as housekeeper at the school and she invited her niece to assist her. In the summer of 1812 Maria Branwell travelled to Yorkshire to start a new life.

Maria in a letter to Patrick Bronte

Surely after this you can have no doubt

 that you posess all my heart.

Two month ago

 I could not possibly have believed
that you would ever engross so much

of my thoughts and effections

and far less could I have thought

that I should be so forward

as to tell you so

I feel that my hearth

is more ready to attach itself

to earth than heaven.

Maria had an annuity of £50 a year, which would have been a great help to Patrick Brontë who had nothing but his stipend. Their first home was Clough House, Hightown, near Hartshead, and their first two children, Maria and Elizabeth were born there in 1814 and 1815. In 1815 Mr. Brontë moved to a larger living at Thornton, three miles north of Bradford, where, in a house in Market Street, the other four children were born, Charlotte (1816), Patrick Branwell (1817), Emily Jane (1818) and Anne (1820). In 1820 the family moved to Haworth, and within a year Maria developed cancer (probably of the uterus), and after a harrowing seven and a half month illness, she died on the 15th September 1821.

 

Patrick Bronte preserved the letters Maria had written during their courtship. And long after Maria's death, he gave Charlotte some of her mothers letters. An experience she founddeeply moving.

Feb. 16th, 1850, writing to one of her friends, Charlotte Bronte wrote:

'A few days since, a little incident happened which curiously touched me. Papa put into my hands a little packet of letters and papers, telling me that they were mamma's, and that I might read them. I did read them, in a frame of mind I cannot describe. The papers were yellow with time, all having been written before I was born. It was strange now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wish she had lived, and that I had known her.'

Here is one of them:

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTE, A.B. HARTSHEAD.

'Wood House GROVE, September 18, 1812.

'How readily do I comply with my dear Mr. B's request! You see, you have only to express your wishes and as far as my power extends I hesitate not to fulfil them. My heart tells me that it will always be my pride and pleasure to contribute to your happiness, nor do I fear that this will ever be inconsistent with my duty as a Christian. My esteem for you and my confidence in you is so great, that I firmly believe you will never exact anything from me which I could not conscientiously perform. I shall in future look to you for assistance and instruction whenever I may need them, and hope you will never withhold from me any advice or caution you may see necessary.

'For some years I have been perfectly my own mistress, subject to no control whatever-- so far from it, that my sisters who are many years older than myself, and even my dear mother, used to consult me in every case of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and actions. Perhaps you will be ready to accuse me of vanity in mentioning this, but you must consider that I do not boast of it, I have many times felt it a disadvantage; and although, I thank God, it never led me into error, yet in circumstances of perplexity and doubt, I have deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor.

'At such times I have seen and felt the necessity of supernatural aid, and by fervent applications to the throne of grace I have experienced that my heavenly Father is able and willing to supply the place of every earthly friend. I shall now no longer feel this want, this sense of helpless weakness, for I believe a kind Providence has intended that I shall find in you ever earthly friend united; nor do I fear to trust myself under your protection, or shrink from your control. It is pleasant to be subject to those we love, especially when they never exert their authority but for the good of the subject. How few would write in this way! But I do not fear that you will make a bad use of it. You tell me to write my thoughts, and thus as they occur I freely let my pen run away with them.

'Sat. Morn. -- I do not know whether you dare show your face here again or not after the blunder you have committed. When we got to the house on Thursday evening, even before we were within doors, we found that Mr. and Mrs. Bedford had been there, and that they had requested you to mention their intention of coming-- a single hint of which you never gave! Poor I too came in for a share in the had words which were bestowed upon you, for they all agreed that I was the cause of it. Mr. Fennell said you were certainly mazed, and talked of sending you to York, etc. And even I begin to think that this, together with the note, bears some marks of insanity! However, I shall suspend my judgement until I hear what excuse you can make for yourself, I suppose you will be quite ready to make one of some kind or another.

'Yesterday I performed a difficult and yet pleasing task in writing to my sisters. I thought I never should accomplish the end for which the letter was designed; but after a good deal of perambulation I gave them to understand the nature of my engagement with you, with the motives and inducements which led me to form such an engagement, and that in consequence of it I should not see them again so soon as I had intended. I concluded by expressing a hope that they would not be less pleased with the information than wew my friends here. I think they will not suspect me to have made a wrong step, their partiality for me is so great. And their affection for me will lead them to rejoice in my welfare, even though it should diminish somewhat of their own. I shall think the time tedious till I hear from you, and must beg you will write as soon as possible. Pardon me, my dear friend, if I again caution you against giving way to a weakness of which I have heard you complain. When you find your heart oppressed and your thoughts too much engrossed by one subject, let prayer be your refuge-- this you no doubt know by experience to be a sure remedy, and a relief from every care and error. Oh, that we had more of the spirit in prayer! I feel that I need it much.

'Breakfast time is near, I must bid you farewell for the time, but rest assured you will always share in the prayers and heart of your own

MARIA.

'Mr. Fennell has crossed my letter to my sisters. With his usual goodness he has supplied my deficiencies and spoken of me in terms of commendation of which I wish I were more worthy. Your character he has likewise displayed in the most favourable light; and I am sure they will not fail to love and esteem you though unknown.

'All here unite in kind regards. Adieu.'