Excerpt from University of North Carolina at Pembroke "Bret Harte was born in Albany,
New York, to a family of little financial means. His father, Henry Hart, was
the son of an immigrant, Bernard Hart, who moved to America and became rich.
However, Bernard left Henry and his mother to marry another lady. Henry, raised
in a Dutch Reformed church, finished his college education but didn't receive a
diploma due to the fact that he owed a ninety dollar graduation fee. Bret's
mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Ostrander Hart, was from the English and Dutch
culture. Not much is known of her other than she came from a cultured,
middle-class stock and was Episcopalian. His parents met during a visit to the
Brett's home and married in 1830. Francis Bret Hart was born in 1836. His education was
interrupted many times throughout his early years because the Harts' moved
around quite a bit in order to keep from paying the high cost of tuition.
Bret's father changed the family name to Harte, and passed away shortly after.
By the age of eleven, Bret had published a number of poems. Around 1845,
Elizabeth moved the family to Brooklyn, where Bret found odd jobs in a lawyer's
office and for a druggist. Despite his extremely young age, Bret had become a
self-supporting young man at age fifteen. During this time, Henry, Bret's
brother who had joined the army, frequently wrote letters filled with stories
of his adventures fighting in the Mexican War and the war in California. It was
during this time that Bret felt inspired to write more of his colorful poems. Elizabeth
moved to California in 1853 and married one of her husband's former college
friends. In late 1854, Bret and his sister, Margaret, joined the family in
California. They traveled by steamship to California, a trip during which they
encountered many unfortunate circumstances, to include storms at sea,
revolutions, and shipwreck. These experiences helped to color Harte's later
writings."