Poet. Born Anne Dudley to nonconformist parents Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke Dudley in Northampton, England. Her father was the steward for the Earl of Lincoln and afforded his daughter an unusually complete education. About 1620 she married Simon Bradstreet, her father’s assistant. On March 29, 1630, Bradstreet and her family sailed for the New World. After several years, they finally settled on a farm in North Andover, Massachusetts in 1644. Simon Bradstreet became a judge, royal councilor, and twice a governor of the colony. Anne Bradstreet became mother to eight children and wrote only privately. She was frequently ill and apparently developed a vaguely morbid mind set and was continually distressed by the culturally ingrained condescension toward women. Her first public work may well have been the epitaph she penned for her mother in 1643. Four years later, her brother-in-law carried a collection of her poems with him to England where he had them published. They appeared as ‘The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts’ in the New World in 1650. While it did sell in England, the volume was not well received in Massachusetts. Although she continued to write for herself and her family, no more of her work was published in her lifetime. She was purportedly buried in the Old Burying Point in Salem, Massachusetts beside her husband, though other locations for her grave have also been proposed. In 1678 her ‘Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning’ was posthumously published followed by ‘The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse.’ She is now considered the earliest of American poets and among the finest of her age. (bio by: Iola)  Family links:  Parents:  Thomas Dudley (1576 – 1653)  Dorothy Yorke Dudley (1582 – 1643)  Spouse:  Simon Bradstreet (1603 – 1697)  Children:  Dorothy Bradstreet Cotton (1634 – 1672)*  Dorothy Bradstreet Cotton (1636 – 1672)*  Simon Bradstreet (1640 – 1684)*  Hannah Bradstreet Wiggin (1641 – 1707)*  Mercy Bradstreet Wade (1646 – 1714)*  Dudley Bradstreet (1647 – 1706)*  John Bradstreet (1652 – 1697)*  Siblings:  Thomas Dudley (1605 – ____)*  Samuel Dudley (1608 – 1683)*  Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612 – 1672)  Patience Dudley Denison (1612 – 1690)*  Patience Dudley Denison (1616 – 1690)*  Mercy Dudley Woodbridge (1621 – 1691)*  Deborah Dudley Wade (1644 – ____)**  Joseph Dudley (1647 – 1720)**  Paul Dudley (1650 – ____)** *Calculated relationship**Half-sibling Note: Some people think she was buried in Salem, Massachusetts, but many historians believe she was buried in the cemetery est. in 1660 in Andover, Massachusetts.  She died 25 years before her husband, and they both lived in Andover.