My great-grandfather, Joseph Brown (above, with his second wife, Penelope), would have celebrated his 212th birthday today --- had he not been tucked away since 1893 in the cemetery at Columbia, just across the Marion County line to the north.
My maternal grandmother, Jessie (Brown) Miller, was born when he was 64 years old --- so the generations telescope a little in this family.
Second child of William and Eleanor (Kelley) Brown, he was born 4 July 1811 in Clark County, Ohio, and moved with his parents and siblings to Lost Creek Township, Miami County, Ohio, in the mid-1820s. He married Hester Eldridge, daughter of Jonathan and Mary (Ramsey) Eldridge, on 3 March 1836 in Shelby County, Ohio. Hester was born about 1816.
Joseph and Hester became the parents of seven children there, but she died of tuberculosis during May of 1850 when the youngest, Lucinda, was under 2 years old.
Not long after Hester died, Joseph and his older children, William Wilson, Jonathan Edward and Eleanor, moved west to Washington County, Iowa, along with his brother and sister-in-law, Archibald and Lucinda. They were joined later by three of the younger children, Archibald S. Brown Jr., Mary and Lucinda. Lydia, about 4 when her mother died, was given to a cousin of Joseph, William R. Forgy, and his wife, Elizabeth, who had no children of their own, to raise. The Forgys lived in Clark County, Ohio.
On 10 September 1869, Joseph married as his second wife in Washington County Penelope Dawson, widow of Isaac. Penelope, born 12 May 1817 in Maryland, had a large family by her first marriage. Sadly, Penelope died less than a year after her marriage to Joseph, on 5 July 1870 after returning home from Washington’s 4th of July celebration --- on Great-grandpa's 59th birthday.
After Penelope’s death, Joseph moved from Washington to Appanoose County to be near two of his children, Archibald S. Brown Jr. and Mary (Brown) DeMack, and his brother, Archibald S. Brown Sr., all of whom were living in or near Cincinnati.
Archibald S. Brown Sr. had married Mary Boswell in 1859 and through her Joseph was introduced to her widowed niece, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss, whose first husband, Moses Prentiss, had been killed 6 July 1865 when the boiler being used to power a saw mill he was operating exploded near Corydon in Wayne County. Chloe had been left with four young daughters.
Chloe, a daughter of Peachy Gilmer and Caroline (McDaniel) Boswell, was born 23 August 1833 at Point Pleasant, Mason County, (West) Virginia, and had married Moses Prentiss on 18 March 1852 in Van Buren County, Iowa. They had moved to Corydon, Wayne County, in 1854.
Joseph and Chloe were married at Corydon on 17 November 1870 and in the spring of 1871 moved across Lucas County to Columbia, in southern Marion County.
Joseph and Chloe became the parents of two children while living in Columbia, Joseph Ellis Brown, born when his father was 60, and my grandmother, Jessie Frances Brown, born when her father was 64.
Joseph died at Columbia on 4 December 1893.
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