Brown Roots

My father Don (always Donald to his mother) Brown was born 100 years ago, April 29, 1924. He lived to age 90, almost 91. The 100-year mark seems like a fitting time to remember him in pictures. These are by no means comprehensive, but they are what I could find and scan in time for his birthday.   This was taken in November 1924 when he was 6 months old. Posing kids with animals was such a thing back then. Usually horses and dogs, but I have a picture of some of my dad's Wootton cousins when they were little, sitting in a cart being drawn by a goat. This is obviously a World War II photo. Such a youngster! T his must have been shortly after he enlisted. He cheated on the eye test to get in, because he was so near-sighted. He failed twice, but each time he studied the eye chart once his glasses were back on. The army, being the army, never changed it, so he passed on the third try. This is my grandmother Ethel, my father, and baby sister Sarah he met when he came home from the war

  In The News: 2023 Week 30 of #52Ancestors   I recently got a subscription to Findmypast, and began searching the newspapers in Surrey and Kent for traces of my UK great-grandparents and associated relatives. As they say, don't ask the question if you don't want the answer. Since my great-grandfather has a fairly distinctive name, Montague Augustus Bailey, it wasn't hard to find him. Unfortunately, much of it is not what you would call flattering. He was a contractor, and his business included picking up supplies and making deliveries via horse-drawn carts. I found four articles between 1898 and 1903 where he was summoned to petty sessions in Bromley, Kent on charges of causing a horse to be worked while in an unfit state. The driver in each case faced charges of "cruelly ill treating a horse", albeit at the direction of my great-grandfather.  In the first case, he admitted he knew the horse was lame, but had told the driver to keep using it until he was stopped

  Exploration: 2022 week 36 of #52Ancestors When I saw the Exploration topic, my great-uncle Harry Jacob came to mind. I know him best for teaching viticulture at UC Davis, but when I interviewed his son Wendell in 2004 I heard another story. In 1919 after graduating from Ohio State University, Harry went to Alaska with a professor as a student assistant/laborer on a three-masted sailing ship, to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. At least Wendell thought that was the name, he wasn't sure. A little online research revealed that the professor was Robert F. Griggs, a botany professor from Ohio State. Originally sent to Alaska to study whether kelp beds near Kodiak could be used for fertilizer, he became fascinated with the ongoing effects of a major eruption the year before in 1912. With funding from the National Geographic Society, he led multiple expeditions between 1915 and 1919 to what is now Katmai National Park, and is credited with discovering and naming the Valley of Ten Tho

Favorite Name: Week 6 of #52ancestors One of the things I like about genealogy is all the names. I'm a credits junkie: I like to watch movie and TV show credits to spot interesting names. I began with someone else in mind, but then I realized it had to be Nonomoe Glenn. I never heard a story about her name, but the first four children were girls: Mary, Amber, Euphemia, and Joy. I can only surmise that when a fifth girl was born, their father said "No! No more!"  But who knows. They did go on to have two sons after that. My first thought was a pair of sisters who are cousins of Nonomoe. I think their names are just captivating: Daisie and Delilah Freshwater. They sound like a sunny meadow in springtime. In both cases they had a maternal grandparent who was a sibling of my great-great-grandmother Minerva Breece . I've been to several Breece reunions, which included descendants of several of the 10 children encompassing Minerva and her siblings, but I don't

In the Census - week 5 of #52ancestors You always have to take census information with a grain of salt. Sometimes a pound.  I haven't found anything truly startling in the census, but there was something unexpected that led me to a further understanding of my great-great-grandmother's relationships. Lucinda Layton married my great-great-grandfather, Albert Newton Brown, in 1858. After he died in 1868 she married Henry Cryder, who she divorced after 18-1/2 years of marriage. She was 46 when she married her third husband, Finley P. Mowdy, in 1888. They had a daughter named Grace who was about 8 when they married. I have a picture of an elderly woman labeled "Aunt Grace Mowdy", identified I believe by my grandfather's sister Alma. I had trouble finding them in the 1900 census. Eventually I found Lucinda in Cedarville Township, Greene County, Ohio, living with Thomas and Grace Lovett with a relationship of mother-in-law. The handwriting is admittedly hard to rea

Week 4 of #52ancestors - Invite to Dinner Which ancestor would I most want to invite to dinner?  I'd go with my grandfather, Chester Brown. He died when I was just a year old, and he's the only grandparent I have no memory of. Even my mother's mother, who died when I was 6, left me a handful of warm fuzzy memories. My father never talked much about him. When I asked what his job was, the answer was "mostly odd jobs here and there".  I don't know if that was because of who he was or because it was the Depression. Maybe some of both. I got the impression he was handy. My father kept some of his tools until late in life, when my parents sold their house to move into a retirement facility. When I was a teenager his life and death seemed like ancient history.  There was an old black and white photo of him on a side table at my grandmother's. In an era of color pictures and Polaroids, that photo might as well have been from 1900. I realize now that for my