BROWN, Catharine (1799-1887)

BROWN

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 12/4/2016 at 00:49:57

Catherine Brown
(June 28, 1799 - January 28, 1887)

Indianola Herald newspaper, Indianola, Iowa, Thursday, Feb 17, 1887, p.2

An Octogenarian Gone
Miss Catharine Griffin was born in Schoharie county, New York, June 28th, 1799. This State then, a great portion of it, was an entire wilderness, or but very thinly settled from the Hudson to where Buffalo now stands at the foot of Lake Erie. In that county she was raised to womanhood. She, like most of the girls at that time was taught to use the spinning wheel to spin the wool for the family clothing. Not only wool but tow and flax – not only their wearing apparel, but blankets and sheets for the beds, and for table linen. She was also taught to use the hand-card to card the wool, the tow, and to break and dress the flax that made the thread that was used in the family. After all this was done, she knew how to put it in to cloth, with the hand loom, long since gone out of date as to making cloth. She knew how to milk the cows, and to yoke the oxen if need be. All of these things were taught to the girls of that day. At the age of 18 she was married to John Brown who was also a resident of the same county. They remained in that State until about 1835, when the western fever took possession of them and they concluded to “go west and grow up with the country.” They emigrated to Laport county, Ind, then an unbroken desert inhabited by the native American. Here, after five years of residence she lost her husband by death, leaving her with a family of ten children, eight being born in the State of New York and two in Laport county, Ind. In the spring of 1856, she with her family emigrated to Princeton, Ills. From their she came to Butler county, Iowa. During all of this time she had struggled with the grim monster “poverty;” yet she had managed to educate and raise her children for usefulness in life. She came from Butler county to Warren county, where the most of her children are now living. During the year 1841 she had the misfortune to have her house burned and all of her household furniture with it. She had been in very poor health for several years. Yet the Great Giver has lengthened out her days until they reached her 88th year. She joined the M. E. church in 1817 and has continued in the faith that there will be a country in the great beyond that will be free from pain and suffering, and where she shall meet those that have gone before. She breathed her last at the house of her daughter, Mrs. Wise, Jan 28th, 1887, leaving seven children and a host of friends to mourn her departure. She had lived to see this great Nation from its infancy to youth, with a population of some 6,000,000 to one of over 60,000,000. She has seen over one half of the States that now compose this Nation born into the Union. She lived to see Uncle Sam go through the struggle of the war of 1812, the Black Hawk and Seminole wars with the Indians; the war with Mexico; and last of all the great civil war of the rebellion, to which she sent her sons. She saw that relic of ancient barbarism, American slavery wiped out. She has lived to see every President, with two exceptions, Washington and John Adams, inaugurated down to the present, Grover Cleveland. She lived to see inventions of the steam engine perform the work for the benefit of man, the invention of the locomotive that now hustles men from one portion of the country to another at the rate of 60 miles an hour instead of twelve; she saw the invention of the telegraph and telephone that conveys news much faster than time goes. All of these things she has lived to see and a thousand other things that we have not the time nor room to mention.
L. S. S.