Isaac Sherman Brown's Death Notice, 1898

    ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

When you are searching newspapers for information pay particular attention to the little social notices that provide clues as to where people are living and who they may have married.

In 1897, Charles A. Brown, son of John Deloss and Nancy (Johnson) Brown of Weldon, Illinois, struck out for Arizona. While this notice in the Weekly Pantagraph of Bloomington, Illinois, does not tell me who his brothers were, it does tell me that he had two brothers living in Arizona. I knew that his brother Herbert Brown and gone to Arizona and was killed while working for the railroad. I've been searching for his other brother Isaac Sherman Brown for many years, and this is the clue that Sherman had gone to Arizona and was still living in 1897 although I had been unable to find him on the 1900 census. 

When Nancy (Johnson) Brown died in 1911, her death notice stated that she had one son living, which I knew was Charles A. Brown. I knew that Herbert Brown was deceased by then, so that implied that son Isaac Sherman Brown also was deceased by 1911.

There is an I. S. Brown buried in the Jerome Cemetery in Yavapai County, Arizona. His unusual metal maker has a birth date of 1866, which matches the Isaac Sherman Brown who I was searching for. It also states that he was a native of Illinois. The death date on that marker is 16 September 1898. I decided to double down on researching this I. S. Brown and got an immediate payoff. More than likely, the last time I searched Arizona newspapers it had not been added to the database and now it has. 

The clincher is that this I.S. Brown was a native of Weldon, Illinois. That bit of information makes the link. It's interesting to note that he was a blacksmith, which makes me think that a fellow blacksmith made his marker. 

Now I have a young widow and two children to search for. My search of the 1900 census did not turn them up in Yavapai County, Arizona. More than likely she remarried or moved in with her family in another location. Still, if these children did not die until well into the 20th century, it may be possible to locate them.