User:Squarle4/Charity Bryant

Article Draft

Things I Want to Accomplish

1. Create a new headline of Bryant’s early life, possibly add more on her early life than I had added so far.
2. Elaborate on her & her mother’s relationship or the lack of.
3. Want to find one more source at least.

Article body

Charity Bryant was born on May 22, 1777, in North Bridgewater, Massachusetts to Silence (née Howard) and Phillip Bryant. Her mother died of consumption shortly after her birth. ^^^^^ Charity did not know much about her mother, though she wrote many intimate poems of their relationship. The first poem she wrote about her mother, she used words like “tender”, used from her sister’s point of view. ===== [I’m debating on adding the poem in, or re-phrasing it to be shorter but still show an example of her poems about her mother.] She was the sister of Peter Bryant, a doctor and later a state legislator, and the aunt of poet William Cullen Bryant. She was a descendant of Francis Cooke through her father's line. As the youngest of at least ten surviving children (including an oldest brother, Oliver, who had enlisted in the Massachusetts militia and died sometime in August of 1776), Bryant was often treated with "affectionate indulgence" by her older siblings, who also instilled in her a love for poetry that would stay with her throughout her life.

In 1807, she went to visit a friend, Polly Hayward in Weybridge, Vermont and it was there that she was introduced to Polly's sister, Sylvia Drake. The two quickly became partners and worked together in a tailoring business that they ran out of their shared house. Their community, including their relatives, accepted them as a married couple ^^^^^ after many years of consistency and courage from both Charity and Sylvia. =====

The two women were prominent members of their community, and ^^^^^ Charity and Sylvia’s ===== relationship was treated the same way as any standard marriage between a man and a woman: according to William Cullen Bryant, Bryant was like the "husband," and Drake was her "fond wife." On tax documents and census records, Bryant was always noted as the head of the household. ^^^^^ Charity and Sylvia were also active members in their community with Charity being a highly trusted tailor in the fashion business and Sylvia working alongside doing seamstress work as well as teaching Sunday school for children. Their community saw them as any other ‘ordinary’, heterosexual, couple. =====

[Early Life]

^^^^^ Charity was named after her mother’s sister, Charity Howard, who also grew up to not be married - although Bryant did marry eventually - but Howard was still a close role model to Bryant. =====

^^^^^ Charity had a caretaker, Grace Hayward, who raised her from infancy for about two years until her father Phillip remarried. Grace still stayed in her life when Charity would become ill or when her stepmother did not want to care for her. Charity’s stepmother was extremely mean and she only married Phillip to be with Phillip only, she did not want to handle the baggage of children that were not her own. Charity would later say Grace was like an “ever-kind mother” to her. =====

Acrostic Poetry

^^^^^ Acrostic poetry defines a poem where each beginning letter of every line spells out a word or message. Charity wrote many poems through her lifetime, which she later ordered to be burned after her passing, but the few that remain are mostly written to Sylvia, expressing love and the need to protect her always. Charity would have each poem that was directed to and for Sylvia spell “Sylvia Drake” with each beginning letter of every line. =====