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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)

Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org

Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal

Nettie: The Story of Henrietta Bromwell

Our school is named after Henry Pelham Holmes Bromwell, who was a poet and a politician, and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln. But Mr. Bromwell's daughter, Henrietta, was an interesting person in her own right. Like her father, Henrietta Bromwell lived a life that combined diverse interests. She was an artist and painter as well as a historian and publisher. Through her writing and research, and from her paintings and sketches, much of Colorado's past has been preserved for later generations.

Her father and her mother, Elizabeth Payne Bromwell, were married in 1858. Henrietta Elizabeth Bromwell was their first child, born in 1859. Her younger brother, Henry Pelham Payne Bromwell was born in 1862.

During the closing months of the Civil War, Henrietta's mother died from illness. Then President Lincoln was assassinated. After these sad events, Mr. Bromwell decided to start his life over. He had always had an attraction to the West and to Colorado in particular. Now Colorado was trying to win statehood and Bromwell thought they could use the help of an experienced politician like himself. So he brought his family to Denver. When Colorado was eventually granted statehood, much of the credit belonged to Mr. Bromwell.

A photograph of Nettie in childhood. This was probably
taken in 1869, just before the family came to Colorado.

Henrietta was known as Nettie to her friends and family. She was eleven when her family came to Denver. She lived with her father and her brother and with her paternal grandmother, who had also come west to help raise the children. They lived in a house in the neighborhood of Arlington, which later became part of the Auraria campus. When Nettie was older, she went to the University of Denver to study art while her brother Henry went to law school.

Nettie became a renowned artist, specializing in outdoor scenes done in oils, watercolors, or pen and ink. She was a familiar sight to the people of Denver as she walked here and there with her parasol to paint or sketch landscapes. She particularly liked the "Bottoms of the Platte," where Cherry Creek joined the South Platte River. In Nettie's time it was a beautiful and interesting area, with quaint homes and wooded sites as well as small factories and workshops.

Mr. Bromwell encouraged Nettie's sense of independence. While she was establishing her reputation as an artist, he worked with the state legislature on behalf of women's suffrage. Independent women, in fact, seem to have always been a part of the Bromwell family. Nettie's cousin, Laura Bromwell, was the "only aerial police-woman in the world" according to one newspaper account from the early 1920's. Laura was a Captain in the New York Aerial Police Corps, and she is said to have inspired Amelia Earhart to become an aviator.

Nettie Bromwell loved to work out-of-doors, and traveled everywhere to find beautiful scenes to sketch or paint. The photograph above shows Nettie and two friends on an artistic expedition in Mexico in 1893. Nettie is sitting closest to the umbrella.

Nettie's independence led her beyond Denver as she searched for remarkable scenery to paint. She often traveled alone and sometimes with other women artists. She went to New Mexico, Texas, and even across the border to Mexico on more than one occasion. In those days many people thought that such trips were full of risks, especially for a young woman by herself. She wrote in her diary (posted at this site as Miss Nettie's Travel Diary) that people warned her that Mexicans were untrustworthy and even dangerous. Nettie remained open-minded, however, and she found them to be hospitable and courteous.

In 1897, Nettie exhibited her work in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, where she found herself among the most famous painters in the United States. Later, she was to visit London and Europe. Back home, she was one of the founders of the Artists' Club of Denver, which later evolved into the Denver Art Museum.

Nettie during her middle years.

Nettie was close to her father, and when he died in 1903 it was very hard for her. Just as Mr. Bromwell once "started over," Nettie put her energy into new endeavors: writing and publishing. She published her father's poetry and some of his other writings, and then she began working on her own writing, too.

This silhouette of Nettie appeared in her
book, "The Bromwell Genealogy," published in 1910.

Nettie had written before for newspapers and for magazines such as "The Western Club Woman" and "The Coloradan." Now she wrote books that were a unique combination of biographies, genealogies, and history. She once again became a traveler, for her research took her all over Colorado and then much of the West. Her work culminated in the five-volume "Colorado Portrait and Biographical Index." The head librarian at the Colorado Historical Society characterized Nettie's contributions as "priceless," preserving much information about our state that otherwise would have been lost forever.

Nettie was nominated for this award by the staff of the library
of the Colorado Historical Society. The nomination is a mark of
Nettie's great standing among historians throughout the West.

Both Nettie's father and her mother died during the month of January. Nettie lived a full life, but on January 8th, 1946, she died after a long illness. You may not be able to go to the Colorado History Museum to see her parasol, but you can always enjoy her artwork at Miss Nettie's Gallery. And when you think of our school, remember Nettie and the qualities she embodied: a love of art and the outdoors, a respect for history, and, most of all, an open-minded attitude towards others.

Another photograph of Nettie as
a young girl, from "The Bromwell Geneology"