The Story of Henry Brown

(1810 - 1883)

by
Dale A. Brown
June 1997

For the sake of readability, the author has documented the following events in definite terms (generally omitting such words as "probably" and "likely"). In some cases, especially when describing the details of  interaction between principal participants, the details properly belong to the realm of probability. Such cases are infrequent and self-evident.

It was March 3, 1833, and a wedding was in progress near Louisville in Stark County, Ohio.¹ George Hoke, a German Baptist minister from nearby Columbiana County, was solemnizing the marriage of Henry Brown and Catherine Keller. The bride, who had reached the tender age of 20 years, had crossed the Atlantic from Holland in a sailing ship at age 16 (or age 6, according to another source ²) and still spoke English with difficulty.³  George Hoke, a family friend, pitied the young girl and agreed to perform the service in German or Dutch. (Her nationality is not certain; the census records contain contradictory information about her origin and native tongue.) ⁴  Marriage services were not new for George Hoke. The prior year he had tied the knot for Henry's younger sister Elizabeth; the year following he would perform the wedding for Henry's younger brother John (who married a girl named Lucinda Briggs).⁵  For now, however, Henry Brown was in the spotlight.
 

Soon, Henry pondered, his ears would be assailed again with the sounds of children. From earliest childhood, Henry Brown remembered the gurgles and screams of babies. Born in Ohio in December 1810, the third child and second son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Houser) Brown, Henry grew up watching his parents dandle babies, comfort babies, feed and cleanse and discipline babies. He even looked on with grief as they buried babies. As one family historian noted, nine of Henry's siblings "died young". By 1833, when Henry Brown left home, his mother had birthed 21 children.⁶  Looking back as an adult, Henry observed that his mother was "with child" almost every year of his childhood. Elizabeth (Houser) Brown was a hardy woman. She would survive the birth of her 21^st child by 24 years, her husband's death by 19 years, and in later years would move hundreds of miles across the state to live her sons, Henry and John. ⁷
 

As Henry looked across the room, his eyes greeted Martin Houser, his 68-year-old grandfather who lived on a neighboring farm in Nimishillen Township in Stark County. Grandfather Houser was a fixture at the Brown homestead. Henry's father, Daniel Brown (also spelled "Braun"), and his family had moved to the area from Pennsylvania in 1809, and in 1813 Grandfather Houser sold a 323-acre plot in Nimishillen Township to Daniel for $2 an acre. ⁸  Henry fondly remembered the old man's stories. With swarms of children crowding around, Grandfather Houser would stretch his legs by the fire and recount the tale of his ordeal with the Indians. This tale was told and retold in the oral traditions of the family, and finally made its way into print as follows:
 

Martin's father was killed by the Indians in Bedford County, PA, in 1789 while plowing. Martin and his sister were captured and taken westward across the Ohio River. Martin escaped three and a half years later while the Indians were having a great feast and left him in camp. His sister was brought home seven years later by an Indian agent. ⁹
 
Rachael Houser . . . was captured by the Indians in Morrison's Cove, Bedford County, during the revolution. Her father and her brother John were killed on the spot at the time of her capture. Martin, another brother, was present, but escaped. The mother was absent at Pittsburgh. Rachael and one of her brothers were taken by the Indians to Detroit. Her brother escaped and returned home after two years' captivity. Rachael remained seven years, and was then permitted to return home. Her mother paid a man twenty dollars to conduct her from Detroit to Pittsburgh. ¹⁰
 
Martin Houser . . . was with his father and two brothers, chopping in the woods at one time [and] they were surprised by the Indians. His father and two brothers fled and escaped, but Martin stood his ground bravely, and was captured. The Indians took him with them, and young Houser remained four years a captive among them. He then made his escape, and went back to Pennsylvania, and from there to Stark County [Ohio]. ¹¹
 
During the Revolutionary War, the savages had attacked the Houser farmstead, now the Homer Guyer home, and had killed the father of the family, Jacob Houser, and his son John. They chased another son, Martin, through the woods, pursuing him for three days. Martin, as the family legend goes, ran the shoes off his feet, but ran to such good advantage that he made his escape ... Another son and a daughter, Rachel, were abducted by the Indians. They were taken to Detroit. The young man escaped after two years' captivity. Rachel was released after a period of seven years. Her mother, it is said, paid a man $20 to conduct Rachel to Pittsburgh... Mrs. Houser was away from home at the time the Indians descended upon her hapless family. It is told that she was in Pittsburgh when the tragedy occurred that made her a widow and deprived her of three of her children. However, she lost no time in repining but took upon herself the task of running the farm. . . .In 1789, the land grant shows, Jacob Houser bought a tract designated as "for Hager's Town" and Martin purchased "Planefield." It is quite evident that the Housers' terrible experience with the Indians did not result in discouraging their efforts at civilizing the wilds destined in the course of time to become the environs of Roaring Spring.¹²
 

After his marriage Henry Brown was ready to move west. He received 100 dollars from his father Daniel, and over the next two years Henry Brown and three of his brothers packed up and moved a distance of over a hundred miles to Hancock County, a sparsely-populated, newly-formed county in northwest Ohio. ¹⁴  Martin, Henry, John and David Brown settled on Section 36 of Washington Township, Hancock County, in 1834. (Eventually, all the brothers sold their land and left the county, except Martin Brown, who resided in the township until his death.) ¹⁵

In 1833 Hancock County was a land of dense forests of walnut, oak, ash, maple and elm. Covered with an undergrowth of hops, raspberry, grapes, and ginseng, the ground was wet and soft, almost impassable. ¹⁶  By that time, most of the county's original inhabitants had moved westward. Bears, wolves, foxes, weasels, and porcupines roamed the woods. Through the air flew hawks, crows, geese. ¹⁷  Wildcat Thicket, an overgrown windfall of small timber that stretched along Hancock County's northern tier of townships and extended into the center of Washington Township, was home to hundreds of wildcats. ¹⁸  The county was flat with a slight northward declination toward the Portage River. ¹⁹  In 1833 no canals, no railroads crossed the landscape. Not until 1849, over a decade after the brothers' arrival, would the canal from Cincinnati to Dayton to Lake Erie be completed. ²⁰  West Independence, the closest town to Section 36 of Washington Township, where the brothers settled, would not be laid out until 1849. ²¹  Arcadia to the north would not be platted until 1854. ²²
 

The land was wild and the population sparse. The 1830 federal census counted--in all of Hancock County--only 451 white males, 351 white females, and nine colored people (three males; six females). It was a young population, too. Seventy-five percent were under 20 years of age. ²³  Only a few years before the Brown brothers arrived, the first log cabin was erected in Washington Township. ²⁴  In 1832 the first white child was born in the township. ²⁵  In 1833 or 1834 the first schoolhouse was built. ²⁶
 

Francis P. Weisenberger gives the following reasons why northwest Ohio was the last section of the state to be settled:

• It was remote from eastern centers of population.
• Indian reservations remained there until a rather late date.
• The Black Swamp covered a considerable portion of the region and contributed to unhealthful conditions.
• A protracted boundary dispute between Michigan and Ohio over the area's northern border hindered settlement.
• Continuous navigation down the Maumee River was difficult because of obstructions near present-day Grand Rapids, Ohio. ²⁷

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, a considerable part of northwestern Ohio acquired a "bad" name, as most of the area was covered by swamp. ... The Maumee [River] country was described as the "most forsaken, desolate and ague smitten wilderness, tangled forest and impenetrable swamp, only excelled in dreariness and desolation, perhaps, by the great Dismal Swamp of Virginia, or the impenetrable everglades of Florida." ²⁸

A columnist for the Ohio Whig and Perrysburg Commercial Advertiser described his 1839 tour of the region in the following terms:

Passing through the wilderness, beyond the prairie, we soon found ourselves enveloped in a cloud of mosquitoes. So numerous were these little tormentors, that we could scarcely see through them, in any direction. Their eternal humming was not less annoying than the avidity with which they assailed our noses, hands, and ears. They exacted, and received from us a tribute of blood, as the customary allowance of all intruders upon their domains. ³⁰

Given all these negative factors, why on earth did Henry Brown and his brothers decide to move to such a formidable place? Like many others, the brothers may have been pulled by the promise of cheap land and the expectation of sharing in the region's anticipated prosperity. The opening of land sales in northwestern Ohio followed the completion of the federal land surveys in 1820. As a result, travel to the area increased and permanent settlement became more common. ³¹  Also, the Preemption Act of 1832--described as a concession to the small settler--provided that the federal government would sell 40-acre tracts if an applicant vouched that land would be purchased for his own use and was "intended for cultivation." ³²  In addition, the legislature announced a decision to build the Ohio section of the Wabash and Erie Canal in 1833.
 

Growth was, in fact, rapid. Between 1820 and 1860, the region came to be supplied with roads, a canal and railroads. These enabled farmers in the interior of the region, away from the Maumee River which flowed northward to Lake Erie, to gain access to markets. ³³
 

In addition to the economic advantages of moving, family ties undoubtedly played a large role in the Brown brothers' decision to move. They were part of a chain migration. In the 1830s and 1840s, a large group of Henry Brown's cousins and other relatives moved from Stark County to Hancock County to Williams County (all in Ohio) where they joined a growing settlement of Dunkards. After the Civil War, Henry Brown moved from Hancock County to Williams County as well. ³⁴
 

The roads on which the Browns traveled from Stark to Hancock County were very bad, especially in the muddy season. Most likely they would have taken the Maumee-Western Reserve Road (today US 20), the only east-west thoroughfare through northern Ohio until 1853. Traffic on this road was heavy, especially in the winter when the ground was frozen. One writer estimated, for example, that as many as 5,500 travelers traveled on a portion of this road in northwestern Ohio in the winter of 1837 - 1838. ³⁵
 

Pulling their wagons to a halt on their newly acquired property, the brothers knew that their first task was to provide shelter from the weather and wild animals. They selected a cabin site as near as possible to a good water supply. Then, with help from other settlers, they cut down trees of a similar size. From these they made logs and rolled them to a central place, work that took three or four days. The logs were then raised into position with hand spikes and skid poles, and men standing at the corners notched the logs and fit them into position. Their work continued on a gabled roof, a log-and-stick chimney, a doorway of hewed timber, and a small window to be covered with fabric or greased paper. ³⁶
 

There they lived, methodically clearing timber, widening the space around their little home while planting crops--and raising children. In this region of Ohio, using primitive farming tools, a man could only clear about ten acres a year. ³⁷  Strong children provided labor for the back-breaking work of cutting down trees, cutting ditches and drains, planting wheat and corn (the principal crops of that region), and the thousand-and-one other tasks that greeted the farmer each morning. ³⁸
 

By the time of the 1840 census, Henry and Catherine Brown had four children: Susanna, John, Eli, and Sarah. ³⁹  Henry Brown was now 29 years old; his wife was 28. As the census enumerator recorded it, the family had two males under five, one female under five, and one female aged five to ten. ⁴⁰  The wives of two of Henry's brothers were also busy having children. The 1840 census states that Martin Brown's family had four children: one female aged five to ten years old and three children under five (a male and two females). Henry's brother, John, had two male children under five years old. David Brown, the youngest of Henry's brothers to make the trip to Hancock County, was 24 years old at the time of the 1840, and was not yet married.
 

Both the county as a whole and Washington Township were being settled at a rapid pace between 1830 and 1860. Considering the twenty years from 1840 to 1860, for example, Hancock County went from 9,986 people to 22,886 people: an increase of 77 percent. Because Henry Brown lived in Hancock County from 1833 until the end of the Civil War in 1865, he witnessed this tremendous population growth and found himself with many new neighbors.
 

In the decade between 1840 and 1850, getting goods to market became easier. In 1842 a road opened from Findlay, the county's largest town (population 469 in 1840), to the east line of Marion Township. ⁴¹  Although this road was less than ten miles long, it was one of a long list of internal improvements. The canal from Cincinnati to Dayton to Lake Erie was completed in 1849. It would soon be supplanted by the railroads, but the canal afforded another means for farmers to ship the fruit of their labors. ⁴²  In December of that same year, a line of the Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Western Railroad began operations from Findlay to Carey in Wyandot County, to the southeast. This line was cheaply built and only 16 miles long, but again it afforded farmers who lived far from population centers the means to move produce. ⁴³
 

Many newspapers were also established in that decade. The Hancock Farmer (1842) and the Western Herald (1845) appeared before the growing populace to compete with the Findlay Courier (which changed to the Democratic Courier in 1845). The papers afforded a dose of partisan politics and local news, and could be had cheaply. The Findlay Courier, for example, was printed every Thursday at a subscription price of two dollars per year, half of which could be paid in produce. ⁴⁴
 

Henry Brown's family was growing through the decade as well. The census records that six new children had been added to his family by August 22, 1850: Lucinda (age 9), Rebecca (age 8), Aaron (age 6), Samuel (age 5), Henry (age 3), and Jacob (age 2). So by that date, Henry and Catherine Brown had ten children ranging from age two to fifteen, six boys and four girls. ⁴⁵
 

Catherine (Keller) Brown had two more children. Mary Ann Brown was born in January 1851, sixteen months after the birth of Jacob Brown. But the birth of Catherine Brown's twelfth child, Isaac, preceded her death in January 1853 by only ten days. She died before reaching her 41^st birthday. Catherine's death left Henry Brown a single parent with twelve children to care for. Fortunately, his older brother Martin lived on a neighboring farm and could help. Also Henry Brown's oldest daughter, Susanna, who was 18 years old at the time of Catherine's death, may have cared for the younger children. ⁴⁶  Henry Brown did not marry his second wife, Leah Myers (also known as "the widow Dickey"), for another three and a half years. ⁴⁷
 

Hancock County continued to grow. Ambrose and David Peters, natives of Virginia, laid out Arcadia in September 1854; a post office was established in the nearby hamlet of West Independence in 1856; and workers finished the Lake and Western railroad, the second railroad in the county, in the spring of 1859. By March of 1860, a train went back and forth daily from Findlay to Fostoria. ⁴⁸  In the pages of The Ohio Farmer in the 1850s, Henry Brown read about horses--how to train a balky horse; what to look for when buying a buggy, carriage, or cart horse--and about new German immigrants: "They are almost always good tenants--neat, industrious and saving, and fond of working the ground." He also learned about a strange new law introduced in the Ohio State legislature in 1857 to prevent the killing of birds and game at certain seasons of the year. ⁴⁹
 

Of course, the newspapers also brought news of the impending conflict between North and South. One contemporary historian estimated that 2,000 boys from Hancock County took up arms in the Civil War, and of these 500 to 700 died. ⁵⁰  The 1860 census enumerated 22,886 people in the county, so those going to fight would have been less than ten percent of the county's total population. ⁵¹  These numbers indicate that many young men stayed home to work on the family farm rather than go to war.
 

When the War ended, Henry Brown decided to move on. A large contingent of the Brown family had moved to Williams County in the 1840s, and as he grew older, Henry Brown wanted to be closer to this part of the family. A deed index for Williams County indicates that Henry Brown bought property from Jacob Bollinger and wife in Williams County sometime between December 17, 1864, and May 22, 1865. ⁵²  According to the1870 census, Henry Brown settled in Center Township. By then he was 59 years old. Besides his wife, Leah, four other people were living with him: Isaac, his last son by Catherine Keller; Mary Dickey, age 17 (probably Leah Myers's daughter from her previous marriage); Lydia Jane Brown, age 10, daughter of Henry Brown and his new wife; and Emma Elizabeth Brown, age four, also the child of Henry and Leah Brown. Only this last child, Emma Brown, was born in Williams County. ⁵³  In all, Henry Brown was the father of sixteen children, all but one of whom appears to have survived to adulthood.
 

Henry Brown lived in Williams County, Ohio, until his death in June 1883. He is buried with many of his kinfolk in Brown Cemetery, west of Bryan, Ohio.⁵⁴

Dale Brown's Family History Page
Author:   Dale A. Brown
Last updated:   December 4,2002

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