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Biography:
Biography:
Grace A. Frazier was born in Camden, New York in 1865. Her father was a well-respected surgeon, Dr. Robert Frazier, and her mother was Theresa McConnell. Both parents were native New Yorkers. Grace was one of seven children. Her five sisters were Ellen, twins Florence and Frances, Carrie, and Kittie, and her one brother was named James. Sadly, he died at the age of 12 years, and it appears that both Carrie and Kittie also died quite young.
Grace did graduate from high school, but it is unclear if she attended college, though I suspect that she did. There is little indication of Grace's doings in her young adulthood, and she did not marry until 1898 when she was 33 years of age. Her physician father must have been pleased that she wed Dr. James P. Brady, a general practitioner who had emigrated from Canada in 1890. The couple had a son, John, in 1903 who appears as a two-year-old in the 1905 census. Sadly, he is not listed by the 1910 census, so he must have passed away as a young child. They were to have no more children.
By 1910 the Bradys were living at 397 Plymouth Ave in Rochester, NY, the city where Grace lived for the rest of her life. It was here that she wrote her poetry and had her little book, Picture Poems, self-published in 1920 when she was about 55.
Camden, NY today
Rochester, NY
Dr. Brady succumbed to cancer in 1927 at the age of 63, leaving Grace a widow. By 1930, Grace was living alone at 594 Magee Avenue in Rochester. The only additional detail I have uncovered about Grace is that she had a poem published in 1933 in a Rochester newspaper. She passed away in May of 1948, aged 83, at her Rochester home. She was survived by her niece, Helen Robson who was 63 and unmarried, daughter of her sister Frances. It must have been sad for Grace, having grown up in such a large brood, to have only her niece for family at the time of her death. She leaves us with her gentle verse to remember her by.
Picture Poems
Picture Poems
(1920)
(1920)
by Grace Frazier Brady
by Grace Frazier Brady
The Summer Sky
The Summer Sky
Easter Lilies
Easter Lilies
The clouds as white as snow drift by
The landscape of a summer sky.
Its mountains border on the lea
Where rivers wind unto the sea,
And there beside a shady nook,
A wood-nymph peers into the brook.
The background of soft azure hue
Is where the angels must come thro'.
How like the angels bright and fair
Who would from Earth dispel the sadness.
Are the lilies for they bow in prayer;
And while they blossom bright and fair,
They love at Easter-time to bear
The tidings filling us with gladness.
Oh, like the angels bright and fair,
They light the homes made dark by sadness.
Leaves
Leaves
Jack Frost
Jack Frost
With the coming of the swallow,
Blighted leaf-buds we may see;
Leaves when taken, rudely shaken
In their beauty from a tree.
Ah, how softly then recalling
To my mind the gentle spring.
Of beholding their unfolding,
While the birds began to sing.
Round about my ears the rustling,
Dried and brown ones now beseech
My attention, close attention
To the sermon that they preach!
Or they whisper in my pathway,
Tapping with a ghostly tread,
That remaining till the waning
Of the autumn, they are dead.
Jack Frost who spread his coat of white
Upon the ground again last night,
Is busy in our chestnut tree
Opening burrs for you and me.
But oh, I fear his breath may freeze
The winter-apples—we should seize
Upon them now—the cellar-bin
Is where they should be safely in!
Altho' Jack Frost for once is kind,
Let us be sure to bear in mind
That like some friends of whom we know,
He might turn out to be our foe!
The Gulls
The Gulls
A Dream
A Dream
The gulls that spread so wide
Their wings on which to glide
Without a seeming care,
And dipping to the tide,
Like foam appear to ride,
Have joys I long to share.
But fate cannot well spare
The gulls with eyes that glare,
From weariness or woe,—
Alas, the fight in air
With warrior-birds that dare
Hostility to show!
Observing thus and so,
I come at length to know
That even birds on wing,
Where tides must ebb and flow
As seasons come and go,
Are often sorrowing.
The awak'ning season of the year
Is like an old, old song I hear,
For oh, it brings back days that seem
To have been nothing but a dream.
When we awake to newer life,
Perhaps the days of toil and strife
That we have known on earth will seem
To have been nothing but a dream.
The Dying Year
The Dying Year
O, hear the wintry winds that blow—
The year is wearisomely ending!
And while you watch your hearth-fire's glow,
Content tho' wintry winds may blow,
So many suffer, well you know.
A helping hand you should be lending,
For bitter seem the winds that blow—
The year is wearisomely ending!
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