Editing Bret Harte (section)

==Early life==
Harte was born in 1836<ref>Some sources say he was born in 1837 or 1839. Even his gravestone has the wrong year, 1837. See also [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1970&dat=19360815&id=MZcoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgYGAAAAIBAJ&pg=2850,4089357 Bret Harte Birth Year Set as 1836], ''Berkeley Daily Gazette'', August 15, 1936</ref> in New York's capital city of [[Albany, New York|Albany]].<ref>Scharnhorst, Gary. ''Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West''. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 3. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}}</ref> He was named after his great-grandfather, Francis Brett. When he was young, his father, Henry, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Henry's father was Bernard Hart, an [[Orthodox Jewish]] immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the [[New York Stock Exchange]].<ref name=Kanfer>{{cite book|last=Kanfer|first=Stefan|title=A Summer World|year=1989|publisher=Farrar Straus Giroux|location=New York|isbn=978-0374271800|pages=40}}</ref>  Bret's mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Ostrander Hart, was from the English and Dutch culture and raised her child in a [[Dutch Reformed church]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bret HARTE Science & Magnet Cluster School |url=https://www.harte.cps.edu/history.html#:~:text=Bret%27s%20mother,%20Elizabeth%20Rebecca%20Ostrander,with%20his%20mother,%20a%20widow. |access-date=2022-12-02 |website=www.harte.cps.edu |archive-date=December 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221202142832/https://www.harte.cps.edu/history.html#:~:text=Bret%27s%20mother,%20Elizabeth%20Rebecca%20Ostrander,with%20his%20mother,%20a%20widow. |url-status=dead }}</ref> Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.enotes.com/topics/bret-harte|title=Bret Harte Biography |website=eNotes|access-date=2017-03-16}}</ref> Harte was of [[French Huguenot]] and Dutch ancestry and descended from prominent New York landowner [[Francis Rombouts]].<ref>Merwin, Henry Childs. The Life of Bret Harte, page 8</ref>

An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend,{{Who|date=August 2022}} "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse."<ref>"Autumn Musings" is reported to have been published in the ''New York Sunday Atlas'', according to Theodore Bryant Kingsbury, "Vanity of Earthly Things," ''Charlotte Observer'' (North Carolina), December 13, 1903, p. 14. The ''Atlas'' may have been one of the Albany newspapers using that title from 1843 to 1855.</ref>

Harte's formal schooling{{Where|date=August 2022}} ended when he was 13, in 1849.<ref name="Scharnhorst4">Scharnhorst, Gary. ''Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West''. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 4. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}}</ref>