Henry Ernest Brown

BROWN

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/19/2010 at 20:49:35

Woodbury County History 1984

Henry Ernest Brown
By Douglas G Brown

Henry Ernest Brown was born at Bloomington, Illinois, March 24, 1867. After graduation from high school, he went to teach at the Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Indian Reservation Day School No. 5. While teaching there he met and courted Miss Lizzie Brown, a teacher at the reservation boarding school at Pine Ridge. Lizzie was the daughter of L M Brown of Woodbury County. The couple were united in marriage, November 22, 1892. L M Brown gave them the farm at Brown’s Lake as a wedding present.

Henry and Lizzie remained on the reservation until 1898. As a speaker of the Lakota language, Henry became well acquainted with many Indian families on the reservation. After the Wounded Knee killings he traveled to the Badlands, looking for friends and parents of his school children who might be survivors in need of help. This friendship was maintained even after leaving the reservation. Many of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show visited him at the Brown’s Lake farm, after the turn of the century, when the show was performing in Sioux City.

The run-down farm at Brown’s Lake was quickly renovated after the couple moved to it in 1898. Corn production was increased from 15 to 80 bushels per acre in just a few years. Mr. Brown won many prizes for corn at state and interstate shows. He developed a state-wide reputation as a seed corn expert. His sons became involved in the growth and exhibition of see corn.

Mr. Brown’s belief in the value of good farming practices led him into joining the efforts to promote Iowa State University as a center of Agricultural research. He was an active organizer of the Woodbury County Farm Bureau and was the first president of that group. He was elected to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors, a position he held at the time of his death, August 31, 1923. He was so widely known that there were a thousand people at his funeral in Salix. Lizzie died in 1924.

Henry E and Lizzie Brown were the parents of four children: Clarence Luther, born October 10, 1893, at Pine Ridge, deceased 1971; Albert Leroy, born August 21, 1898, at Salix, Iowa, deceased 1972; and Paul R, born November 4, 1901, at Salix, deceased 1927. Clarence Luther had two daughter, Margaret Ann Brown and Margery Nan Brown, who now live in Sioux City, Iowa. Florence Eva married Wm Stacy of Ames, Iowa. She had two children: Robert Brown Stacy, Libertyville, Illinois; and Ann Stacy, Tennessee. Albert Leroy ‘Roy’ had three sons: Douglas Gay, Kenneth Dudley, and Gordon Elliot.