Charity Bryant was an American business owner and writer. She was a diarist and wrote acrostic poetry. Because there is extensive documentation for the shared lives of Bryant and her partner, Sylvia Drake, their diaries, letters and business papers have become an important part of the archive in documenting the history of same-sex couples.
Biography
Charity Bryant was born on May 22, 1777, in North Bridgewater, Massachusetts to Silence and Phillip Bryant. Her mother died of consumption shortly after her birth. She was the sister of Peter Bryant, a doctor and later a state legislator, and the aunt of famed romantic poetWilliam Cullen Bryant. She was a descendant of Francis Cooke through her father's line. As the youngest of at least ten surviving children. Bryant was often treated with "affectionate indulgence" by her older siblings, who also instilled in her a love for poetry that would stay with her throughout her life. Bryant began working as a teacher in 1797 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, which allowed her the opportunity to live independently from her father and stepmother, earn her own living, and still protect her reputation. During this time, she formed intimate relationships with several of her fellow teachers, including most notably Lydia Richards, with whom Bryant exchanged a number of poems containing somewhat erotic imagery. In 1807, she went to visit a friend, Polly Hayward in Weybridge, Vermont and it was there that she was introduced to Polly's sister, Sylvia Drake. The two quickly became partners and worked together in a tailoring business that they ran out of their shared house. Their community, including their relatives, accepted them as a married couple. Drake discussed their relationship in her diaries:
Tuesday- 3 —31 years since I left my mother’s house and commenced serving in company with Dear Miss B. Sin mars all earthly bliss, and no common sinner have I been, but God has spared my life, given me every thing I would enjoy and now I have a space, if I improve it, to exercise true penitence.
Bryant’s nephew, William Cullen Bryant, also described their relationship usuing language that emphasized the depth of the women's relationship:
If I were permitted to draw the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me interesting, story of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for more than forty years.
The two women were prominent members of their community, and their relationship was treated the same way as any standard marriage between a man and a woman: according to William Cullen Bryant, Bryant was like the "husband," and Drake was her "fond wife." On tax documents and census records, Bryant was always noted as the head of the household. Bryant had suffered from poor health since infancy, and her adult years were also plagued with illness. In the summer of 1839, she developed heart disease that would ultimately kill her on October 6, 1851. In her will, Bryant left their shared home entirely to Drake who lived there until 1859.
Bryant and Drake are buried together under a shared headstone at Weybridge Hill Cemetery, Addison County, Vermont.
