Martha Bragge with her husband and children early 1860s. Source: Picture Sheffield
Martha was born in 1816 and met her husband William, an engineer and surveyor, while working as governess in Birmingham. Martha’s life changed completely when William was offered a job in Brazil to build a gas works and railway. Martha and their two children joined him in the spring of 1852, and apart from a brief return to England in 1855, the family remained in South America until 1857.
Martha wrote regularly to her mother and to William when work commitments took him away. These letters reveal a woman who, though in many ways the ideal of a Victorian middle-class wife, was also an independent thinker. Although used to managing servants in England, she was shocked by the injustice of the system in Brazil, writing in 1852 ‘I intend when I have more time to make a few comments on slavery…’, and later ‘… it is a cold heartless affair altogether…’. She also formed a close bond with her Black servant Ignacia.
The family eventually returned to England and settled in Sheffield, where William became a partner in John Brown and Company. They lived in Collegiate Crescent before moving to Shirle Hill, Cherry Tree Road.
Martha died in 1877 aged 59 following some years of ill health. She was buried with her mother in plot EE 66, just below the Samuel Worth Chapel in the Nonconformist area.
You can read more about the lives of women buried in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication A Woman’s Place.