User:PoetAnne2012/Anne Bradstreet Celebration

Anne Bradstreet Celebration ... In the Valley of the Poets Mistress Anne Bradstreet has become a woman held in high esteem for not only her poetic works but also for her spirit of exploration and sense of community. Residents are now just beginning to harvest their heritage as they rediscover Anne and celebrate the 400th year of her birth.

She was a founding mother of the cities of Boston and Cambridge along with the town of North Andover, parent town of the Andovers. The original Andover, founded in 1646, became her final home. It was there that she raised her family of eight children with her beloved husband Simon and created her most beautiful verses.

In 1650, without her knowledge, her bother-in-law, Rev. John Woodbridge took some of her works back to England and had them published in London. They became an instant sensation and were reprinted several times.

The annebradstreet.org is the start of a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Merrimack River Valley of Massachusetts with its powerful assemblage of artists, poets, writers, composers and others possessing creativity of all kinds. A few, in no particular order: Harriet Beecher Stowe, T. S. Eliot, Jack Kerouac, Bette Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Goulet, Thelma Todd and Louis B. Mayer.

There are others, but it all began with Anne and her ability to create while navigating a very narrow path of what was acceptable and what was not for a woman of her station in life. Her friend, Anne Hutchinson, discovered that Massachusetts Bay Colony could prove a dangerous place for a woman wanting to write or state her beliefs in public. Somehow, Mistress Bradstreet managed to thrive as she quietly composed her poetry and also encouraged her children to succeed in this harsh New England.

She is worth more study. . . as America celebrates Anne.