| Patrick Brontë | |
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Patrick Brontë around 1860 |
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| Born | 17 March 1777 Rathfriland, County Down, Ireland |
| Died | 7 June 1861 (aged 84) Haworth |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Teacher, Reverend |
| Spouse | Maria Branwell (1783–1821) |
| Children | Maria (b. 23 April 1814, d. 6 May 1825 (aged 11) Elizabeth (b. 8 February 1815, d. 15 June 1825 (aged 10) Charlotte (b. 21 April 1816, d. 31 March 1855 (aged 38) Branwell (b. 26 June 1817, d. 24 September 1848 (aged 31) Emily (b. 30 July 1818, d. 19 December 1848 (aged 30) Anne (b. 17 January 1820, d. 28 May 1849 (aged 29) |
The Reverend Patrick Brontë (17 March 1777 - 7 June 1861) was an Irish Anglican curate and writer, who spent most of his adult life in England and was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son.
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He was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Alice McClory[1], in Drumballyroney (near Rathfriland), County Down. At one point in his adult life, he formally changed the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë. (See the article Brontë for theories for the change).
He had several apprenticeships (to a blacksmith, a linen draper, and a weaver) until he became a teacher in 1798 and eventually moved to Cambridge in 1802 to study theology at St. John's College. He gained his BA degree in 1806 and was appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he was ordained a deacon of the Church of England, and ordained into the priesthood in 1807.[2]
In 1809 he became assistant curate at Wellington in Shropshire and in 1810 he published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems. The following year (1812) he was appointed school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley.
At Guisely Brontë met Maria Branwell (1783–1821), whom he married on 29 December 1812. Their first child Maria (1814–1825) was born after their move to Hartshead, Yorkshire, and their second, Elizabeth (1815–1825), after the family moved to Thornton. There the rest of the family were born: Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849). Brontë was offered the Perpetual Curacy of Haworth in June 1819, and took the family there in April 1820.
His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joined the household in 1821 to help look after the children and to care for Maria Brontë, who was suffering the final stages of tuberculosis. She decided to move permanently to Haworth to act as his housekeeper.
Brontë was responsible for the building of a Sunday School in Haworth, which he opened in 1832. He remained active within local causes into his old age, and between 1849 and 1850 organised action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which was eventually supplied in 1856.
After the death of his last surviving child, Charlotte, nine months after she married, he co-operated with Elizabeth Gaskell on the biography of his daughter, and was responsible for the posthumous publication of Charlotte's first novel The Professor in 1857. Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819–1906), who had been Brontë's curate, stayed in the Brontë household until he returned to Ireland after Brontë's death at age 84 in 1861. Brontë outlived not only his wife by 40 years, but all six of his children.
Under the collective title Brotherly Sisters, Terence Pettigrew tells the Brontë story in 53 individual narrative poems. The collection starts with their father's farewell to his native Ireland in 1802 (The Road From Drumballyroney) and ends with a description of Anne Brontë's death, in Scarborough, in 1849 (Do Angels Feel The Cold ?).
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