Googling for Joel Herbert Brown

 ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

A google search can turn up more information than you thought possible. Use as many variants of a person's name as you can think of and narrow with a keyword for location or any other unique term you can think of. 

To search for Joel Hebert Brown, son of John Deloss and Nancy (Johnson) Brown of DeWitt County, Illinois, I used the following combinations paired with the words Jerome Arizona: "Joel Herbert Brown," "Joel H. Brown," "J. H. Brown," "Joel Brown," "J. Herbert Brown," and "Herbert Brown." Because I wanted the words in his name to appear together in the text, they were in quotation marks. I was searching specifically for the years when he lived in Jerome Junction, Arizona, and google did not disappoint.

The first item that turned was an insurance industry book on insurance payouts for 1906, the year when Joel H. Brown was killed in a train accident in Arizona. The payout was $1,000. 

The next item was the most interesting. Joel H. Brown and a partner evidently patented a hand truck in 1898. This patent was filed in the United States.

The following year, they filed the patent in Canada. This time more drawings were included, and Joel Herbert Brown's first name was used in the patent. 

Since Joel H. Brown worked for the railroad, my guess is that this hand truck would have been his ideal and perhaps a piece of equipment he would have used on the job.