From:  The book, "Sims' History of Elgin County"
By:  Sims, Hugh Joffre, 1915 -
ISBN 0-920339-01-8
Copyright, 1984 by the Elgin County Library
Ontario, Canada


pg. 115


The Brown Family

  The Brown family story began a long time ago.  In 1920, in his ninety-fourth year, Nicholas Carter Brown was interviewed by Louise Hatch.   He told her that his great-great-grandmother Murilla crossed the Atlantic in 1620 aboard the Mayflower with 102 other Puritans and landed at Plymouth.  Murilla married a Colonel Payne.  Her daughter married Nicholas Carter Brown's great-grandfather.   The Browns were Highland Scots.  In the American revolutionary war, they fought on Washington's side.  After the war was over, they moved to Canada because they did not agree with the rules laid down by the new government.  They were not United Empire Loyalists.

  The Browns first settled near Brantford on the same Beaupark farm that was later occupied by the Honourable George Brown, who was not related to the family.  Silas Brown (this is in error, it should be a reference to Silas Carter), Nicholas Carter Brown's grandfather, built the windmill at Windmill Point, Fort Erie.

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  Nicholas Carter Brown recalled that there were too many Indians at Brantford to suit his grandmother.  Her boys were with Indians all time and knew the native language as well as they did English.  The Browns then moved and took up farming west of Ingersoll where they sowed and raised the first field of wheat ever grown in Oxford County.  Silas Brown (Note:  this shold be a reference to Benajah Brown) met a tragic end while on a business trip to Toronto when he attempted to cross Burlington Bay and fell through the ice.  After that the boys left the farm one by one, Nicolas Carter Brown's mother who was then a girl, was keeping house for her brother west of Richmond in Bayham Township and it was because of her that his father, Walter Brown, settled near Dunboyne.    Sila's son, Walter, married Jemima Carter and settled in Malahide Township.    Walter and Jemima had seven (note:  this is in error, there were six children), children, who were Nicolas Carter, William Bowen, George Paine, Walter Livingstone, Sarah Jane, Jonathan and Brinton.  (Note:   Brinton was Brinton Paine Brown, son of Benajah Brown and a brother to Nicholas' father, Walter)

  Nicholas Carter Brown was born on February 22, 1826 near Aylmer.  He married Mima Maria Backhouse, daughter of Abraham and Amelia Backhouse of Grovesend.  After they were married, they took up land west of Dunboyne on land just east of Henry Backhouse.  They lived there until Walter Brown died in 1876.  Nicholas then took over the old homestead.  Nicholas had four children:   John W., Merritt Alpheus, Leopold Alexander and Helena A.   John W., the firstborn, died as an infant.   Merritt Alpheus was the second child.  He married A. Christina McCredie and had four children.   Merritt, a lawyer in Toronto, died in 1952.   Leopold Alexander Brown was Nicholas's third child.  He became a veterinarian in Aylmer.  He died on November 26, 1957, at the age of ninety-nine.  The next child was Helena A., who lived only two years.   Nicholas Carter Brown married Margaret Williams after his first wife died in 1867.  By this marriage he had five children:    Walter James, Cora Mima, Nicholas E., Albert, and Franklin A.

   Walter James Brown in later life turned out to be an outstanding man in many ways.  He received his early education at Aylmer Collegiate, attended the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph, and law school in Chicago.  He became involved in the First Brigade of the Canadian Militia and when World War I broke out, he became the commander of the Fourth Brigade of Artillery, serving for four years.  He next became the commanding officer of the western Ontario branch of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps.  In 1926, he became a colonel.  He also became an editorial writer for the Toronto Globe, and the bursar of the University of Western Ontario, taking an active part in the expansion of the university.  He was also a member of the committee for the restoration of the University of Caen, in Normandy, France.  And, somehow, he found time to become the warden of St. Paul's Cathedral.  He was married twice.  At his death in 1959, he was survived by his wife, Janet, and a daughter.   Cora Mima Brown married Oscar A. Chase of Sparta and settled down near Dunboyne.  They had two children.   Nicholas E. Brown died as an infant.   Franklin Albert died when he was five years old.

  When Margaret Brown died in 1877 at the age of thirty-five, Nicholas C. Brown married a third time for companionship and to have someone to look after his children.  His third wife was the widow Martha Birdsell of Orwell.  There were no children from this marriage.  Martha died on March 8, 1909, at the age of eighty.  She was the sister of David Davis of Orwell.  Nicholas Carter Brown passed away on February 19, 1920, in his ninety-fourth year.

  Dr. McLay Miller of Aylmer recalled that everyone called Brown "Uncle Nicholas" and that he was liked by all.  One of the things that Dr. Miller recalled was Brown's eating habits.  Apparently, he chopped up his food into little pieces, placed them on a place, and moistened them with tea to keep himself from choking.

  William Bowen Brown, Nicholas's brother, married May McTaggart, daughter of Archibald McTaggart, and settled on Lot 9, Concession 4 of Malahide Township.  They had two children.   George Paine Brown, another son of Walter Brown, took up farming on Lot 10, Concession 3 of Malahide.  He had four children.  His wife Sarah died in 1882.  Brown (George Paine Brown> left this realm at

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the age of seventy-nine in 1916.   Walter Livingston Brown married Amelia Backhouse, daughter of Abraham and Amelia Backhouse.  Amelia died in 1863.  Walter later became an Episcopal Methodist minister.  His second wife was Sabra Olive Doolittle, daughter of Ira and Sarah Doolittle of Luton.   Three children were born to them.  Reverend Walter Brown's farm and homestead was located on Lot 10, Concession 3, Malahide Township.   Sarah Jane Brown became Mrs. David Whitsell.   Her daughter married Levi Young of Port Bruce, who later became well-known as a local historian.  One of the Youngs' children, Bruce, drowned at Port Bruce when he was sixteen.  Sarah Whitsell married John Teller after her first husband died.   Jonathan Brown married Mary Eleanor Balcombe, and settled on the farm located on the northwest corner.  According to the records, this land in later years was purchased by Clinton Van Patter.   A new brick dwelling was erected there in 1886.

  Nicholas Carter Brown's brother Brinton (Note:   Brinton was an uncle to Nicholas, a brother of his father, Walter) was a restless man.  After he left the family farm, he settled north of Port Rowan, but after a time moved to Middleton until he again became restless and moved to St. Williams.  After a time his itchy feet forced him to move and settle for a spell along Lake St. Clair.  Then he again moved to settle on Back Street (No. 3 Highway) west of St. Thomas.  The lure of the West finally took over and he left his family on the farm at Back Street and headed westward through Michigan and Wisconsin.  Finding nothing to interest him, he returned to Back Street, purchased a tract of land near Brownsville, and finally settled down in 1844.  Brownsville at this time did not look like a good place to settle in.  There were two great swamps with a high knoll in the middle on which the Browns settled.  One of the swamps was like a lake and was about a mile wide.  The swamps were crossed by a floating corduroy road.   Enoch Brown, Brinton's son, and his uncle drove the livestock all the way from Back Street to Brownsville.  Another of Brinton's sons drove the team.  He was just a boy and was full of vinegar and sparks.  He was in charge of taking his aunt and her baby to the new site.  The aunt was horrified at the floating road.

"Oh," she cried, "Where are you taking us?"

"To the Promised Land!  Drive on," he replied cheerfully.

  Nicholas Carter Brown witnessed the birth and growth of many things in this country.  "Aylmer and I," said he, "are just of an age.  The first building in town was one where the Molson's Bank now stands, and father helped to get out the timber for that just before I was born.  It was a store and post office about as large as a room in a house.  Philip Hodgkinson was the first proprietor.  People called it the post office at first.  Afterward when a tannery and a blacksmith shop and a tavern arrived, they called it Troy, and then along came Colonel Talbot and wanted it named after Lord Aylmer, some friend of his in Ireland.

  "When I was little there wasn't any road south of Talbot Street at all except Nova Scotia Road (now Elgin County Road No. 42).  They had been surveyed out before the settlers came in, of course, but surveying was all there was to it.   I remember being a little chap, and a neighbour dropping into our log shack and my father and he was talking about making up a road 'beat'.  When he went away, I asked my father what he meant.  That was the beginning of road work and statute labor.  Before then, when you knew some new people had come in and were settling anyways near you, you just struck up a trail, as easy as a bee-line as you could, for his shanty and used it.  Often trails were struck on a larger scale.  Like, just before I was born, Colonel Bostwick struck out a trail from Simcoe up to Port Stanley and another was made from north of Aylmer to the mouth of Silver Creek.   This was to make use of the new mill that Granddaddy Backus had built at Silver Creek.  Roads were just accommodation affairs which the people made anywhere which best suited them.

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  "I remember when there were no public cemeteries and you buried your dead somewhere on the farm.  I remember when you carried your land deed in your pocket up to London to prove you had a right to vote.  It was all a property vote then, and I don't know after all as there has been anything much better.  I remember when women voted here the same as men-that is, on property.  Afterwards they edged the women clear out of any rights at all.  If a man died, no matter how large an estate there was, all the property and his respectable wife and the family went totally unrepresented perhaps for twenty years until there might happen to be a boy in the family get old enough to cast a vote.  Anything rather than let the mother of a family that worked for it vote for it.  I remember all through the period from its beginning till, I hope its end.

  "I remember when there wasn't an organized school system or a government-qualified schoolteacher in the whole region.  Any old broken down, good-for-nothing person could come along and set up a school if he could persuade enough people into it.  The price would be perhaps ten dollars a child for three months with a weeks board thrown in.   Each child was a separate matter.  There were no lumping together of interests as now.  If a youngster had to stay home and work part of the time he went for a half or quarter of a child on the school register.  The learning didn't amount to much.   But that didn't matter for learning wasn't needed."

  "Wasn't needed?" Miss Hatch asked.  "Was there ever a time when it wasn't needed?"

  "Yes," Mr. Brown carried on, "What did we need learning for?  There wasn't a paper or a book in our homes to read.  And as for arithmetic, there was no money to reckon with.  Black salts and potash, which last was black salts-molasses boiled down in a sugar state, were the only money-producing products we knew.  I remember when there was only about four dollars a head if the whole of the country was counted.  And if any man had five or more, why other people had less that was all.  What did we need arithmetic for?  All the money coming our way in those days, I reckon, we could have handled with sheer native sense and been glad to do it.

  "No, everything then was a story of work and for that we needed no learning.  If I wanted a bushel of oats for seed and you had them, I went to you and offered my labor for a half day or day and the transaction was complete.  As far as we needed more knowledge, more came, and that's the way as I see the world works.  As a usual thing, men you dealt with then were men of honor-if they weren't, their reputation went before them.  I recollect Joel Lewis making out a note in red chalk.  It was carried about in a pocket until it was about defaced, and in the meantime warnings had come to be sounded throughout the country that legal matters required ink.  Lewis was approached to make out a fresh note.  'Do you think,' he exclaimed indignantly, 'Do you think I would deny those red chalk marks?'   A man's business honor was a tender point with him in those days.

  "We had no medals then, or scholarships or sporting trophies, but we had honors we valued every whit as much.  I can tell you I was a proud young man at eighteen when I was selected one of the four cornermen for a log house raising.  The men rolled the logs up to us and we had to hew and fit the corners to lie snugly together as fast as they brought the trees.  It meant both swift and expert work.  Only the most skilled axemen were qualified to fill the bill.  I was a cornerman for several houses and not a few outbuildings.  I felt I was doing my bit for my country.

  "I went into the feast, after a raising, completely satisfied.  For a raising feast in the old days, there generally was a sheep killed.  And there was bread and potatoes.  For dessert we had pumpkin sauce or sweet cabbage or sauerkraut.   Pickles were never heard of.  Sweet cabbage was just cabbage cooked the ordinary way.   Pumpkin sauce was our staple fruit the year around.  You cleaned the pumpkin and cut it up, cooking it in a great kettle.  When it was nearly done, you cupped the pulp out and boiled down the liquid to a syrup.  You put this in a barrel with dried (not too crisp) pumpkin and perhaps added some spice.  It was sweet enough without sugar and

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would keep.  When some grandee or visitor came along we had another dessert reserved for him.  We took wild grapes and poured melted maple sugar over them.   These were our preserves for state occasions.

  "My, weren't we lads hungry for fruits!  The modern child's wildest dreams of tropical fruits wouldn't equal ours for one just nice plain apple.  T he story got abroad when we were little chaps that if you went out on Christmas Eve between twelve and one o'clock and shook your apple trees real hard they would bear well next season.   Did we lads go?  I guess we did!  Up to our waists in snow.  We certainly shook our trees hard.  Yes, they did have a crop next year, as it happened."

  Nicholas Carter Brown was always interested in the raising of sheep and his experiences date back to when he was a little boy and a man by the name of James Carpenter, who owned sheep, came along with a drove and offered him a jackknife if he would look after them while they pastured at his father's place.  "I took care of them good for that knife," he said.  "We never allowed sheep to lay out over night on account of the wolves.  If it was not possible to get them to a pen, father stayed out with them.

  "When I was old enough I began building up a flock of my own, and when it grew too large, I rented it out like James Carpenter had done to us.  My rent was a pound and a half of wool per sheep per year, and the man could have the rest of the wool and the increase for his share.  He must hold himself ready, however, to give me back at any time the herd as I let it out to him.  That doesn't sound like much profit on a herd does it?    I remember Mr. David Davis saying to me, 'Brown you can't stand.  It'll never pay,' But I thought it did.  On a large flock, when wool was worth say forty-five cents a pound, as it then was, your income sometimes amounted to well up to a thousand dollars.  And the men that kept them did well on their part.  I thought it was a very good union between capital and labor."

  When he was asked about a wolf-proof pen he replied, "Well, it was a high log fence, as you might say, so many feet square.  On one side the logs would go ten feet high.  On the opposite side the logs would be laid just high enough to stand well over a sheep's back.  From this we slanted up what was called a shanty roof until it went ten feet high.  But we didn't have the roof cover the whole pen, perhaps half or three quarters of it, which made a nice shed.  The wolves trying to get in would walk right up this shanty roof and drop down into the open space of the fold from its top edge.  It was an excellent trap.  For no wolf seemed to know how to get out of it.  And although they were in there with the sheep they never attacked them.  A wolf won't attack when a prisoner.

  "Wolves were cowardly things.  I have seen plenty of wolves.  Perhaps they weren't starved enough down here in this country, but I never thought they were much to be afraid of.  A hunter could kill a deer, put his hat on top of the animal and go off for help to skin it.  The wolves would stand around and never touch it while his hat was on it.

  "I remember when the wolves left here.  It was seventy-seven years ago (1850s).  Whether it was the putting in of the dam at Silver Creek or the other mills on other streams or what, I am sure I don't know whether raising the water of the creeks could have anything to do with it, but certainly about that time and suddenly all the wolves in this part of the country departed and were seen no more."'

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