William Lytle Browne (1923)

BROWNE, MCCLURE

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 8/3/2024 at 22:20:40

The Indianola Herald
Indianola, Iowa
Thursday, August 2, 1923
Page 2, Column 4

William Lytle Browne, son of Matthew and Mary Lytle Brown, was born on September 17, 1844, near Palmers Fort, Westmoreland county, Pa.

His early life was spent on his father’s farm, which remained for three generations in the family. In the spring of 1862 he went to an uncle’s farm near Wooster, Ohio, and in August of the same year, when less than eighteen years of age, enlisted in the 102nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. His war service was in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. In the summer of 1864 the detachment of which he was a member was captured by an overpowering number of Confederates and he remained a prisoner of war until the war ended, a period of nine months, of which three months was in Andersonville prison.

Shortly after his discharge from the army he came to Iowa, and after a year at Simpson college, and a short commercial course, engaged in business with an uncle at St. Charles, Madison county. Here, on September 17, 1874, he was married to Mary P. McClure. In 1880 he removed to Knoxville, where he made his home the remainder of his life. Throughout his life he was a consistent and devoted member of the Presbyterian church, and an elder therein for over thirty years, for much of that time acting as clerk of the Session. A former pastor publicly said of him, that he had never had and never expected to have another so efficient. He was also a member, and for many years a responsible officer, of John Ferguson Post of the G.A.R.

On the morning of Easter Sunday, 1922, in the church to which he had been so devoted, he was suddenly stricken and for fifteen months he remained an object of tender solicitude on the part of his family and friends, and, though his intellect was somewhat clouded, an inspiration and example of tranquil cheerfulness and Christian fortitude in suffering; until on July 17, 1923, he passed on to be reunited with the loved wife who had preceded him in March, 1911.

His purity of life, his tranquil strength of character, his wisdom in council, his honor and integrity in business, his charity for all and his willing presumption of responsibility for the common good endeared him to all with whom he was associated and it can well be said of him, “His life was not in vain.”

He is survived by three children, Maj. F. W. Browne, of Washington, D. C., and Miss Ruth E. Browne and Mr. Herman H. Browne, of Knoxville, by one sister, Miss Mary S. Browne of Ligonier, Pa., and by two grandsons, Frederick Lee and William Lytle Browne, jr., of Washington, D. C.-----Knoxville Express.

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