© Kathy Duncan, 2023
In many areas of the nation, the newspapers of the later part of the nineteenth century began publishing social news - who was visiting who, who was visited by whom, who got married, who died, who was born, who celebrated a birthday, who had a golden anniversary, etc. These little tidbits are invaluable.
Combining newspaper social columns with the FANs of John Deloss Brown has paid off multiple times, but this is the best find to date. A. L. Brown was Augustus Leroy Brown, brother of John Deloss Brown. Augustus lived in Champaign, Illinois. His first wife was also his first cousin, Lucia Hay, the daughter of Coonrod or Conrad Hay. For that reason alone, it has been important to research him. Over the years, the Champaign, Illinois newspapers reported the visits of his mother and brothers to see him in Champaign. Sometimes they reported his trips to visit them in Weldon, Illinois. There was a report when James A. Brown, one of his brothers, was murdered. Over the years, Augustus L. Brown was a justice of the peace, a marshall, and a truant officer. All of that was reported in his own obituary.
Because I know that A.L. Brown was a marshall in Champaign, Illinois during this time period, I am confident that this notice is about him:
However, because I have never been able to connect A. L. Brown's father,
Isaac S. Brown, to any other Browns, I had no idea that A. L. Brown had an uncle named Squire Brown. This notice in the
Champaign County Gazette on 9 February 1887 indicates that A.L. Brown's uncle Squire Brown lived in Upper Alton, Illinois, and A.L. Brown had not seen him for more than 30 years. That would mean that Augustus had not seen his uncle since before 1857 when Augustus would have been 24 or younger.
The most important takeaway here is that Isaac S. Brown of Pike County, Illinois had a brother named Squire Brown who lived in Madison County, Illinois. Having a brother with such an unusual name will eventually help me identify the rest of their family.
My next step was to seek Squire Brown in Alton, Madison County, Illinois, and to hope that Squire was his real name. I found information on the Findagrave memorial of
Josephus J. Brown that indicated that he was the son of Squire Brown and
Jane Underwood, natives of Kentucky and that he had been born in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois on 31 July 1853. That gave me a link between Squire Brown and Isaac. S. Brown because it placed them in the same county in the mid-1800s.
Even better, I found a Findagrave memorial for
Squire Brown in the Troy City Cemetery, Troy, Madison County, Illinois. According to his tombstone, he was born on 3 January 1818, making him eight years younger than Isaac S. Brown. Squire Brown died on 22 March 1893 of "lung fever."
Next, I doubled back into Greene County, Illinois, where I found Squire and Jane Brown on the 1850 census, living next to her parents Francis and Margaret Underwood. The Underwoods are buried in the Mt. Gilead Cemetery in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois, as are Isaac S. Brown's mother-in-law and father-in-law, Amy and John Hay. A search of the Mt. Gilead Cemetery turned up Jane (Underwood) Brown who died in 1876. All I can imagine is that she either died while on a visit to her relatives or that Squire Brown took her to Mt. Gilead Cemetery to be interred near her parents. I wonder why Squire's children did not inter him with their mother?
Squire Brown does not appear by name on the 1840 Greene County, Illinois census, but I suspect he might be the young man living in Isaac S. Brown's household.
Squire then married Jane Underwood in Greene County, Illinois on 20 May 1840. They were married by Rev. Peter Dodgson, whose wife was Jane Brown, born in Kentucky. So far, I have not been able to find out enough about her to know if she is related to Squire Brown and Isaac Brown.
I located a land deed for Squire Brown in Greene County, Illinois in 1844, from when he purchased land. No other Browns are mentioned in the deed in terms of having land adjacent to this purchase or as witnesses. I still need to search for Squire Brown's sale of that land.
After a lot of searching, I finally found Squire Brown on the 1880 Madison County, Illinois census. On that census his name appeared as Esquire Brown, He had been indexed on Family Search as Esquire Bronen. My purpose in locating that particular census was to find out where his parents were born. On that census, their birthplaces were reported as Virginia for both father and mother.
One biography that I found for Josephus J. Brown, son of Squire Brown, stated that his father had come to Greene County, Illinois with his parents at a young age. If I combine that with the account that I have of Issac S. Brown coming to Greene County in 1828, a picture of the Brown family starts to emerge.
Mother and Father Brown were both born in Virginia by at least 1790. They either married there or met and married each other in Kentucky. They were married by at least 1809. They were in Kentucky from at least 1810 when Issac S. Brown was born until 1818 when Squire Brown was born. Of course, they may have been older than I have projected. They probably had several more children, some of whom may have been born in Virginia. They were probably in Greene County, Illinois by 1828. Isaac S. Brown may have been on his adventure in New York in 1830, so I need to search the 1830 Greene County, Illinois for all Brown households that have a son in Squire's age range.
