America's first poet was no stranger to suffering. To escape persecution by the Church of England's Archbishop Laud, she left her native land where she had lived on the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where he father was the steward in charge. At the age of eighteen she was one of the Puritans who braved the Atlantic Ocean in the Arabella with her husband, her parents, and other pioneers. Three sickening months at sea, surviving on salt meats, brought them to meet starving survivors when they reached Salem.
One year after their arrival in the New World her father warned friends still at home in England:
If there be any endued with grace, let them come over. For others, I conceive they are not yet fitted for this business. There is not a house where is not one dead, and some houses many. The natural causes seem to be in the want of warm lodging and good diet. Those who landed at Plymouth in winter died of scurvy. Lady Arabella herself, who was aboard their ship which was named for her, died on land just months after they arrived.
These devout Puritan dissenters settled near the Charles River on land first called New Towne-later Cambridge. The cow pasture adjoining the space where they built their houses is now called Harvard Yard. The Bradstreet's house was located at what is now the corner of Brattle Street and John F. Kennedy Street, otherwise known as Harvard Square. After their most welcome first child, Samuel, was born in Cambridge, the family moved to a wilderness called Ipswich. After several years there, they moved to their permanent home in the still more remote wilderness which they developed and named Andover. Here America's pioneer poet found strength in spite of many illnesses to write increasingly excellent poems. She now also bore and cared for eight children in spite of the fact that the father's role as Governor of the community required much travel.
Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law, the Reverend John Woodbridge-with or without her permission-released a series of her early poems for publication in London in 1650 titled: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. Her finest poems, however, were created later in the wild New World despite her lameness and death-threatening illnesses. The John Harvard Library edition of The Works of Anne Bradstreet published by Harvard University Press carries an introduction by Adrienne Rich.
Among her descendants are William Ellery Channing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, and Wendell Phillips.
No portrait of Anne Bradstreet exists; her burial site is unknown. America's first poet, remains an unforgettably alive artist.
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