Margaret Branwell (1748-1773)

Joseph Corin (or Coren) of Paul, near Penzance, Cornwall, married Margaret Branwell of Gulval (and Penzance), Cornwall, on 20 April 1772 at Madron. Margaret Branwell was the eldest daughter of Richard Branwell of Penzance (who was baptised at Madron Church on 26 February 1711), and Margaret Branwell, née John. (Richard Branwell and Margaret John were married at Madron Church in 1742, and she was the daughter of Thomas John of Penzance). Margaret Corin, née Branwell had, amongst others, a brother Richard, the eldest child, from whom are descended the Branwells resident at Penzance today, and another brother, Thomas, born 1746, who married Ann Carne of Penzance at Madron on 28 November 1768. Thomas and Ann Branwell, née Carne, had three sons and eight daughters, including Maria Branwell, born 1783, who married the Reverend Patrick Brontë at Guiseley, Yorkshire, on 29 December 1812. They had issue, one son and five daughters, who included the famous literary figures Charlotte Brontë (1816-55), Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-48), Emily Jane Brontë (1818-48), and Anne Brontë (1820-49).

The Branwell family resided in the neighbourhood of Penzance, Cornwall, for two centuries before Margaret Corin, née Branwell's day, and their name, under the various guises of Branwell, Bramwell, Bromwell, Bremble and Bramble is to be found in the registers of the parishes adjoining Penzance. The earliest mention of the name occurs in the Parish of Sancreed, near Penzance, in 1605. The Branwell family distinguished themselves as a prominent and respectable family of Penzance citizens, both in civic eminence and as rigid, but narrow, Methodists. Dr. Rigg, the eminent Wesleyan Divine wrote some reminiscences for The Methodist Recorder in 1903. About 1846 he was stationed at Penzance, and he says, "Among the intelligent and superior mercantile families in Penzance in 1846 was the Branwell family which still flourishes with increasing prosperity and influence...." (See The Maternal Relatives of the Brontës, by J. Hambley Rowe, M.B., F.S.G., Chairman of the Council, Brontë Society; Presidential Address delivered before the Bradford Historical and Antiquarian Society, 28th April 1911.)

Joseph CORIN, son of Joseph Corin and Margaret Corin, née Branwell, who was a Brewer of Penzance, was also described as a Scrivener in his grandfather's will, dated 9 February 1792.

by Evan Best

THE MATERNAL RELATIVES OF THE BRONTËS
by J. Hambley Rowe, M.B., F.S.G.,
Chairman of the Council, Brontë Society.

While much has been written and more conjectured regarding the ancestry of the Brontës on the paternal side, their maternal forbears have been uniformly neglected. This seems the more inexplicable as it is generally considered that the distaff influences are the more important in the moulding of capabilities and temperament. In point of intrinsic interest, also, the history of the mother's family is quite as attractive as that of the father's.

Maria Branwell, who, at Guiseley, on December 29th, 1812, became the wife of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was the daughter of Thomas Branwell and Ann Carne, his wife, both natives of Penance. The Branwells resided in that neighbourhood for two centuries before Thomas Branwell's day, and their name, under the various guises of Bramwell, Bramble and Bromwell, is to be found in the registers of the parishes adjoining Penzance.

The earliest mention of this name that I can trace in Cornwall occurs in the Parish of Sancreed in 1605. A former incumbent of the adjoining parish of Paul, John Trernearne, saw his church in the hands of the Spaniards in 1595, when four of their warships made a raid on the Cornish coast. From him was descended Jane Tremearne, who, on July 2nd, 1705, married Martyn Bremble, presumably the son of John Bromwell, whose marriage to Constance is recorded on March 13th, 1657-8, at Madron.

Martyn Branwell's will, dated April 22nd, 1719, and proved July 29th, 1719, exists at the Probate Registry at Bodmin. He is described as of Penzance, and a butcher by trade; and he mentions his sons, Martyn, Richard, and Joseph, and three daughters, Maudlyn, Margery, and Alice. To his wife, Jane he bequeathed the fee simple of the house and gardens, etc., wherein he dwelt, and also another house. From the terms of his will it is evident that Richard, Joseph, Margery, and Alice were minors.

Of these children, Richard, baptised at Madron Church (the mother church of Penzance), on February 26th, 1711, is of greater importance in our special quest than the others. He married in 1742, at the same church, Margaret John, daughter of Thomas John, blacksmith of Penzance, and by her was the father of four sons and four daughters. Of these sons, two, named Martin, died young; the other two were Richard, the eldest child, from whom descended the Branwells resident at Penzance today, and Thomas, the father of Maria Brontë.

Of the four daughters, Margaret, the eldest, married Joseph Coren in 1772, and by him had a son, also named Joseph, described as a scrivener in his grandfather's will, dated February 9th, 1792. The next daughter, Elizabeth, married John Keam, who is described as a shop-keeper. In The Wesleyan Magazine for 1826 (page 68), there is an obituary notice of this worthy by the Rev. Wm. Pennington Burgess. Therein it is stated that he died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and that for thirty-six years, "he had been a steady and upright member of the Methodist Society, and was generally respected and esteemed." Alice, the younger daughter, married John Williams, gentleman, of Redruth. I have not been able to ascertain anything concerning the descendants of these three daughters, Mrs. Keam, Mrs. Coren, and Mrs. Williams.

With Jane, the third daughter of Richard Branwell and Margaret John, the case is different. She married, at Madron in December, 1790, John Fennell, a schoolmaster, some nine years younger than herself. When, in the early part of 1812, Mr. Fennell was appointed to the headmastership of the residential school for the children of Wesleyans at Woodhouse Grove, at its inauguration, Mrs. Fennell became the matron of the establishment. She died at Crosstones Vicarage, near Todmorden, well past the Psalmist's span of life. On the tombstone in the churchyard, besides the date of her death on May 26th, 1829, are the following lines, a loving tribute from her husband:
Farewell, blest saint, thou dear and faithful friend,
Beloved in life, lamented in thine end,
Instructed long in sharp affliction's school
To make submission to thy lord thy rule,
To find, when every hope of life was past,
Thy blest, thy choicest comforts, were thy last.
Thou now eternally with him shall dwell,
Blest saint, thou dear and faithful friend, farewell.

John Fennell was the son of Thomas Fennell and Mary, his wife, of Madeley in Shropshire, and was born in 1762. In 1801, there appeared in The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine two short letters from his pen. In one he discusses the character of the Rev. John Fletcher, of Madeley, and appends a letter received by him from that saintly man. One gathers from it that Fennell was a godson of Mr. Fletcher, who was an intimate friend of John Wesley. The second communication is an account of the death of Susanna Taylor, of Penzance, on January 10th, 1801. The death of this young lady of only 19 summers is affectingly described, and the lessons derivable from her good life are laid down for those who desired a pattern of piety.

From these it is evident that Mr. Fennell was a class-leader amongst the Wesleyans of Penzance. In 1796, and in later years, he contributed replies to Mathematical questions in The Ladies' Diary. He was never a fully fledged Methodist Minister, though in The Dictionary of National Biography, he is described as such. It was his head-ship of Woodhouse Grove School - a post, since his time, held chiefly by Wesleyan Ministers - which has led to the false conception that he was an itinerant Minister among the Methodists. He was at Woodhouse only some ten or eleven months, but in that short period he was the means of bringing together the two people who were afterwards to become the parents of the gifted Brontë sisters.

The story of the meeting of the Irish Curate and the little Cornish lady has been told many times over since Mrs. Gaskell, in her classic, related it for the first time. It would seem that Mrs. Fennell needed help in the needlework department of the establishment, and, as Miss Maria Branwell was an expert at sewing, and was on the lookout for some method of supplementing her little fortune, she accepted the proffered post, and after a tedious journey north, was duly installed.

Shortly after Mr. Fennell left Woodhouse Grove, he took Holy Orders, and for some time served as a Curate to the Rev. John Crosse, the blind and pious Vicar of Bradford. We first find Fennell's signature as Curate in the Bradford Parish Registers on October 15th, 1815, the very day that Christ Church was consecrated, and to which his predecessor and son-in-law, William Morgan, had been appointed as incumbent. His last signature appears on April 13th, 1817.

A great friendship, based on their mutual belief in Evangelical theology, existed between Vicar Crosse and John Fennell. When the Vicar died, Fennell came over from Crosstones, and preached the funeral sermon, which was afterwards printed. Thanks to Mr. Crosse, who had previously held that incumbency, Mr. Fennell was appointed to Crosstones, near Todmorden, and continued Vicar of that remote and upland hamlet until his death in October 1847 (amended to 1841) at the age of 79.

By his first wife, of whom we have spoken, he had but one child, Jane Branwell Fennell, who was baptised (amended to born) at Madron on October 9th, 1791. As is well known, she was married at Guiseley to the Rev. William Morgan by the Rev. Patrick Brontë, and on the same occasion her husband performed the marriage ceremony for Brontë and his wife, who, of course, was Jane Fennell's cousin. On the very same day, in the far distant church of Madron, Maria Branwell's youngest sister, Charlotte, was married to Joseph Branwell, her own cousin, and, consequently, cousin also to both ladies of the Guiseley marriages.

Of William Morgan Vicar of Christ Church, Bradford, much has been written in scattered form, but we yet await the full story of the useful life of this strenuous worker in the cause of religion and temperance. He was of a choleric and irascible temperament, and it was reported of him that on one occasion he sent his cook to jail for making thin sauce!

The Church of Madeley, near Wellington in Shropshire, where Fletcher ministered, should be added to the list of places of Brontëan interest. Fletcher, too, was a friend of John Crosse. Morgan had been a curate at Wellington, and, somewhat later, Patrick Brontë had also held the same office. When Fennell, the god-son of Fletcher, came to live near Bradford, what was more natural than the development of friendships with Crosse, with Morgan, and, through the latter, with Patrick Brontë? The links in the chain of causation of an important marriage are here revealed, and the influence of John Wesley on the Brontë sisters, their lives, and their writings is not so remote as might be imagined.

RICHARD BRANWELL (1711-1792) was baptized at Madron on 26 February 1711. He married around 1742. He married Margaret John at Madron in 1742.

"He with his partner Mr Hambleton were the premier builders of Penzance, and built the Assembly Room in the Union Hotel (first assembly 1791), where the gentry (à la Poldark) met monthly to hold their balls. He also built 25 Chapel Street, and put in the Georgian staircase at Godolphin Manor. His work on the quay, however, was washed away, and he was criticized on this account." (correspondence with Lilian Oldham).

Richard's will is dated 9 February 1792. He was buried eight days later, in Penzance.

Richard and Margaret had eight children: