Haworth’s parsonage forged three novelists from one nursery
The Brontë siblings—Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and brother Branwell—grew up in Haworth after Thornton births, inventing shared imaginary worlds before publishing under male masks. Irish-born curate Patrick Brunty restyled the surname with a diaeresis so English tongues would hear two syllables.
Patrick (1777–1861), farm-worker stock from County Down, won a Cambridge scholarship, married Cornish Maria Branwell in 1812, and buried her in 1821. Aunt Elizabeth Branwell arrived from Penzance to raise the children. Eldest Maria and Elizabeth died in 1825 after Cowan Bridge hardships Charlotte never forgot; Patrick remained a widower visiting the parish poor.
Patrick studied divinity and history at St John's College, Cambridge, and there changed the spelling of his surname to Brontë, perhaps in tribute to Horatio Nelson, whom he admired. After failing to remarry he accepted widowerhood at 47, often leaving the children with Aunt Branwell, who taught them arithmetic, letters and needlework, and with the maid Tabitha Aykroyd, known as Tabby.
Money dictated schooling. In 1824 the four eldest girls went to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, a cut-price school for families of poorer clergy. Maria, lively and precocious in her reading, came home with advanced tuberculosis and died on 6 May 1825 aged 11; Elizabeth followed on 15 June aged 10. Charlotte and Emily were brought home.
The survivors made literature and died young. Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette and The Professor and died in 1855 at 38. Emily's only novel was Wuthering Heights. Anne wrote Agnes Grey and the more ambitious Tenant of Wildfell Hall of 1848. Branwell, a painter and writer, became addicted to alcohol and laudanum. Tuberculosis killed him in September 1848, Emily that December and Anne, at Scarborough, in May 1849.
Source: Brontë family
