O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,
That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;
Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,
Their names without a record are forgot . . .
—Anne Bradstreet, “Contemplations”
Anne Bradstreet was the North American continent’s first published poet. Yet her poems are largely forgotten, her grave unmarked. Now scholars at Merrimack College in Massachusetts are trying to pinpoint her burial site—and restore her place in American literature.
Bradstreet was born in England in 1612. Her Puritan family was wealthy, allowing her to become well-educated. When she was 16, she married Simon Bradstreet. Then in 1630, Anne’s family immigrated to the New World. Both Anne’s father, Thomas Dudley, and her husband would help found Harvard College and serve as governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Bradstreet’s 1650 book of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was a sensation both in the Colonies and in England.
“She was a household name in the 17th century, both here and in England,” says Christy Pottroff, assistant professor of English at Merrimack.
Bradstreet’s brother-in-law took her work to England for publication. Most of her writings describe her role as a woman and mother of eight and her devotion to her husband.
“If ever two were one, then surely we,/If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee,” she wrote in her most well-known poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband.”
Bradstreet always wrote through the lens of her faith. “She thought poetry was a vehicle for glorifying God,” Merrimack associate English professor Ellen McWhorter says.
That is clear in poems like “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666.”
And when I could no longer look,
I blest His grace that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so ’twas just.
Pottroff and McWhorter are leading several students in a project to locate Bradstreet’s grave. They’ve dubbed their effort “Finding Anne Bradstreet.”
Scholars believe Bradstreet was buried in what is now North Andover, Massachusetts. There’s a marker for Bradstreet in an old burial ground in the town, but it was erected only about two decades ago and is not her gravesite. Her original marker was likely wooden and lost long ago to weather and time.
Most people think Bradstreet’s grave was on private property where her family home stood. The Merrimack group hopes to use radar to find underground disturbances that suggest a burial site. Given the passage of time, there are unlikely to be any remains. Even if there are, there are no plans to exhume them.
The goal of “Finding Anne Bradstreet” is simply to locate the site and bring Bradstreet’s work and life back into the light.
. . . But he whose name is grav’d in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
—Anne Bradstreet, “Contemplations”
