The Brontë family tree, from Penzance and County Down to Haworth

The Brontë family tree has two roots, and neither of them is in Yorkshire. Thomas Branwell came of a merchant family of Penzance. He married Anne Carne, born in the town in 1744, at Madron parish church on 28 November 1768. Anne bore twelve children, and Maria was the eleventh. Thomas died in April 1808 and Anne a year later.³

Patrick Brontë was born in County Down in Ireland on 17 March 1777.⁸ His name was written Brunty or Prunty, and he took the spelling Brontë at Cambridge.¹ Maria married him on 29 December 1812 from her uncle’s house in Yorkshire.⁸

The couple had six children, the last born in 1820. Charlotte was born at the parsonage of Thornton, near Bradford, on 21 April 1816, and Anne was born at Thornton in January 1820.^1,4 That year Patrick became curate of Haworth. Gaskell dates the move to 25 February 1820, and In Search of Anne Brontë to 20 April.^8,4

Maria died of cancer in September 1821, when her eldest child was seven.^8,2 Their house is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum.²

Aunt Branwell is the one person on the Brontë family tree who joined the household without a marriage or a birth. Elizabeth Branwell, an elder sister of Maria, travelled more than 400 miles from Penzance in 1821 to nurse her, and stayed over twenty years to raise the children. Branwell wrote that she had “been for twenty years as my mother”.⁶

She died of a blockage of the bowel in October 1842, on the 28th or the 29th by two accounts, and was buried in the family vault at Haworth church. Her will left equal shares to Charlotte, Emily, Anne and a fourth niece.^5,6

In 1824 Patrick sent Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to the school for the daughters of clergy at Cowan Bridge.⁸ The two eldest died in 1825, aged eleven and ten. Elizabeth caught tuberculosis there and lies beneath the floor of Haworth church.^2,7

The four who lived grew up writing. Charlotte and Branwell made the kingdoms of Glass Town and Angria, and Emily and Anne made Gondal.¹⁰ The sisters worked as teachers or governesses, and Branwell as a railway clerk, a painter and a tutor.²

In 1846 the sisters published Poems as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, and only three copies sold.^9,10 Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey followed in 1847.^2,10

Within nine months the Brontë family tree lost three of the four. Branwell, addicted to alcohol and laudanum, died at Haworth on 24 September 1848, aged 31, of tuberculosis.^10,2 Emily died of tuberculosis on 19 December. Anne died at Scarborough on 28 May 1849 and is buried at St Mary’s church there.^1,2

Arthur Bell Nicholls, curate at Haworth since 1845, married Charlotte on 29 June 1854.^11,1 She died on 31 March 1855, aged 38. Westminster Abbey gives excessive morning sickness in pregnancy and a chill.^1,2

Patrick died on 7 June 1861, aged 84, having outlived all six children.^10,2 Nicholls went home to Ireland, married again in 1864 and died in 1906.¹¹

The chart began as the Brontë template of the library, which the Brontë genogram also draws with illnesses and ties. Every date was then checked against the sources below.

To draw your own on this model, place the married couple at the centre with the date of the marriage, add both sets of parents above and set the children in order of birth. Draw anyone who lived in the house, as Aunt Branwell did. Write a source beside each date, and where two sources disagree, keep both. The guide to genograms for family history goes further.