Elizabeth Bryant-Green 1801-1878 by Alicetine Smith

A 5-2              Elizabeth Bryant-Green 1801-1878 by Alicetine Smith

4/10/2013 Ver. 0

 (Elizabeth Bryant-Green was the wife of the Reverend Joseph Green and the great, great, great, grandmother of Carol, Anita, Diane, Mary, Claudia, John and Peggy.  She and her husband and 3 children came to America from England in 1833, in America they added 2 more children. Truly a wonderful story about her life for the Green history.  Also, Clovesville later became Fleischmanns, NY. Steve)

Elizabeth Bryant Green(1801-1878)
The following was written by Alicetine Gertrude Smith, probably in the early 1900's.  Ms. Smith was the daughter of William Smith and Louisa Green and she was born in 1854.  She was the granddaughter of Joseph Green and Elizabeth Bryant Green, the subject of her writing.  Ms. Smith's mother, Louisa Green, was a sister of Emma Green, the future wife of Servetus Bennett.  Elizabeth Bryant was born in 1801 in Bath, England:

“I think I ought to call this an article on Grandma, as my heritage of English customs comes from her and although it may not be in the best of taste I shall quote her often hoping the annals of my family may prove as interesting as strangers.
At any rate, I am the proof that there was such a family.  She was a Bryant and was born and brought up in Bath, England.  Two of my nieces visited the Cathedral there a year ago and saw where the Bryant's were buried and where my mother was baptized.  They had quite an estate and a title but titles didn't mean anything to me in those days so I have forgotten what they were.  She was well educated and a beautiful singer.  She didn't drop her "H's" as we say all Englishmen do.  She told me that there was a different dialect in every shire so that accounts for their different speech.  She was taught sewing in school and did the beautiful embroidery-just like French embroidery-and her knitting needles flew so fast I could only hear the click.” 

A squire was the first title so I quote from a book a description of how a squire dressed on the eighteenth century.  "A beau of that period wore a coat of silk, satin or velvet elaborately laced, a snuff box in his pocket with which he made a great play; at his side a sword and under his arms he carried a clouded amber cane.  They wore black stocks around their necks.  Wigs were the mode and their heads were close shaven beneath.  In the morning it was the custom to wear a night cap and a morning gown beautifully embroidered."  It sounds as if he must have been an irresistible creature.
A squire's daughter wore clothes of fine material and color, her hair in the ringlets covered with a little lace cap.   I don't know about the curls but grandma always wore a beautiful lace cap trimmed with ribbons.  She reversed the order and wore her night cap nights.  She walked and eat as straight as an arrow and never went out without her kid gloves on and didn't take them off in church either.  I used to go to church with her and she went up in front and never even turned her head to see who was there or who came in nor let me either.  She always had the best of material for her clothes but they were made plain and she never wore a pin or a flower as an ornament.
Recollections come so fast I forgot to finish my description of a lady's dress.  Skirts were very elaborate, befrilled and stretched on hoops with panniers of the material draped to the back and falling in a tail to the hem.  Hooked cloaks were worn out of doors and in muddy weather, they wore pattens and clogs.  Later headdresses grew so large they were obliged to sleep in them.  Face patches were worn by all.
Grandma said the fields looked like vast lawns with hedges around them and no fences.  She said the climate was so even all the change they ever made in bedding was from a cotton sheet to a woolen one.
They are great eaters and had five meals a day.  She had on peculiarity-she was very fond of hop tea and I couldn't understand it until she told me their afternoon meal was composed of bread, cheese and ale which was very bitter so she acquired the taste.  I think that was her only weakness.  She was brought up in the established Church of England and loved dancing.  She attended some of the meetings of Wesley's contemporaries and was converted.  After that she couldn't endure the sound of the violin because it had made her commit so much sin.  She married a Methodist preacher which offended the family and they came to this country in 1833 with three children.  My mother was a year old.  They were seven weeks on the ocean.
They lived in New York a year and then came to Roxbury to live and preach.  His circuit extended to Hancock and took in all this country.  Dominie Scott whom I knew well and he were assistant pastors.  He travelled on horseback and would be gone six weeks at a time.  Once when he came home grandma said "These are the rudest people I ever saw.  Two women came here one day with their sunbonnets on, brought their knitting and staid and staid so I couldn't get the children's supper and put them to bed on time."  Grandpa said, "Didn't you get tea for them?"  She said, "No, I didn't invite them."  He had a hearty laugh at her expense and told her they were trying to be friendly.  You see in England people never went visiting or to a funeral without an invitation so she didn't appreciate their friendly ways.
She was very devout and strict about the Sabbath.  She cooked her Sunday dinner, the children cleaned their shoes and nothing was left that could be done on Saturday.  She told me she had to sew a button on one Sunday but she ripped it off and sewed it over on Monday so the devil wouldn't get the best of her.  I walked home from church with her one Sunday and found a nice strawberry which I offered her.  She refused it and she never picked anything, even in the garden, on Sunday.  She took me out one evening and bade me listen to a bird singing in a nearby wood.  I was simply entranced with the notes of the wood thrush.  I have always listened for it ever since.  It used to be one of the joys of my life when my husband took me up the road above the village in the evening and we would sit there and hear the antiphonal chorus sung in the woods and others across the river.  She said that song was the nearest like the English nightingale of the any bird in this country.  You remember John Burroughs went to England to hear the nightingale.  He waited weeks before he heard it and said it was worth it.
The harsh climate, fording streams, exposure to all kinds of weather, preaching night and day brought on pneumonia followed by quick consumption and grandpa died at thirty-six years of age (1842). (Another source suggests Joseph would have been 42 in 1842.)   He was building a church in Clovesville at the time and wanted to be buried under it as they did in England.  Grandma couldn't do that and they lie side by side in the old cemetery-Rev. Joseph Green and wife Elizabeth.  One of our presiding elders told me he was converted under his preaching so his labors were not in vain.

  Elizabeth did not die until 1878.  It would be interesting to know how she survived and raised the children, 5 in all, after Joseph died.  Our ancestor, Emma Green Bennett, was born in NYC in September of 1833.  Presumably she made the trip across the ocean in vivo.