Amos Brown: A soul riding out upon the storm ....

I happened upon the following scrap of an obituary the other day in The Chariton Patriot of Nov. 27, 1872, and while I wish that there were more to it, we've got to be grateful that the second paragraph survived --- a masterful example of the obituary writer's art. Even 150 years later, it conjures up the chill of a burial on the prairie northeast of Melrose on a cold winter day. Brrrr.

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Amos D. Brown, an old and well known citizen of Melrose, died Nov. 14th, aged 68 years. He was born in Kentucky and removed to this state in 1850 and entered the land on which the town of Melrose is built upon. He leaves two sons and two daughters. He was a great-uncle of J.C. Peacock (of Chariton). The (Albia) Union closes a lengthy obituary as follows:

"Many a kind thought will be treasured up in memory of the kind old man who now sleeps in the icy grave, the winter winds moaning a dirge as he quietly sleeps 'the sleep that knows no waking.' He is gone, this soul riding out upon the winter storm of a bleak November night to that better land from which tidings alike of good or evil import never come. The great ocean of life will swallow up his memory as that of untold thousands before, not a ripple to mark where he sank to rest. With out an enemy in the wide world, may his weary soul bask in the warm heavenly sunlight of a vast eternity. In peace rest his ashes."

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Amos is deserving of a footnote to the south of Iowa's history because, as the obituary points out, the village of Melrose was platted on his farm during 1866 as the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad tracks pushed west toward Russell, Chariton and Lucas.

That was the same year that Amos's wife, Mary, died on June 22 and was buried in a pioneer cemetery known variously as Grady or Hardy some distance to the northeast of Melrose. Presumably, Amos was buried by her side during that cold November six years later, but there is no stone. (Thanks to Ron Rader for the Find A Grave image of Mary's stone.")

Although he lived for six more years, Amos wrote his will on the 3rd of October, 1866, leaving his farm land jointly two his two sons, Amos W.S. Brown and William B. Brown, with the exception of the portion of it that had been purchased by developers and platted as Melrose. His two daughters, Etta Ann and Cynthia, received the family home, the few acres surrounding it, livestock and household goods.

The edition of The Albia Union that contained the complete obituary does not seem to have survived, so this piece of it, picked up and republished in The Patriot, probably is all that's out there. But at least his memory has not been entirely swallowed up without a ripple to mark where he sank to rest.