THOMAS M. BROWN.

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         Among the self-made men of Louisa county must be numbered Thomas M. Brown, who for over sixty-seven years was identified with the agricultural development of Muscatine county, but is now living retired in Letts. He was born in Union county, Indiana on the 24th of December, 1832, being a son of Mathew and Julia F. (Bromage) Brown. The father was a native of North . . .

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. . . Carolina, his birth occurring in 1806, while the mother, who was a Virginian, was born in 1810. He was of German extraction and she of English. They were married in Indiana in 1827, continuing to make that state their home for some years thereafter. Seven children were born to them, four of whom survive: Thomas M.; H. P., who is a resident of Letts; N. J., who lives in Dallas county, Iowa; and Emily, the widow of Sidney Davis, of North Bend, Wisconsin. The father passed away in 1842 but the mother survived until 1893.

         Thomas M. Brown’s boyhood and youth lacked the advantages and pleasures which are generally considered to be the rightful heritage of every child. Being but a lad of eight years when his father died and one of the elder members of a large family he early had to assume the responsibilities which belong to manhood. At the age of thirteen he had to terminate his schooling, which had consisted of a three month’s course, and become a wage earner. For ten years thereafter he worked in the pineries—not being the best place for the intellectual or moral development of a lad. In the winter he felled trees and in the spring and summer rafted the logs down the Mississippi to the mills. He was an ambitious young man and desired to get along in the world so in 1855 he rented a sawmill on the present site of Columbus Junction. This he operated for two years during which time he sawed the lumber for the first railroad bridge which spanned the Cedar river. At the expiration of that time he leased two hundred and forty acres of land which he cultivated for five years. In February, 1859, he took charge of Lord’s ferry on the Cedar river, continuing to run it until 1862, in August of which year he enlisted in Company F, Thirty-fifth Iowa Infantry, and went to the front as first sergeant of his company. He was in seventeen general engagements besides many skirmishes. In front of Spanish Fort, at the capture of Mobile, Alabama, he was hit by a piece of shell in the left leg, which incapacitated him for three months. This wound still bothers him some. He served until the 29th of August, 1865, when he received his discharge at Davenport. Returning to Muscatine county he bought the interests of the other heirs in his father’s homestead, which he operated in connection with the two hundred and forty acres which he rented. In 1877 he bought this also, improving it and bringing it to a high state of cultivation. He continued to engage in farming for thirty years at the end of which time he sold his property and retired to Letts, where he owns one of the finest residences in the town.

         Mr. Brown established a home for himself by his marriage, on the 3d of July, 1856, to Miss Sophia Ferry, a native of the state of New York. Her parents were Silas and Flavia (French) Ferry, the mother a native of Massachusetts and the father of Pennsylvania. They were married in the state of New York, whence they came to Iowa in 1838 locating in Burlington. Of the thirteen children born unto them only five are surviving: Sophia, now Mrs. Brown; Sarah P., the wife of John Lambert, of Guthrie County; Henry L., of South Flavia, the wife of Josiah Ballet, of Oxford, Nebraska. Mr. and Mrs. Ferry Flavia, the wife of Josiah Ballet, of Oxford, Nebraska. Mr. and Mrs. Ferry resided in Iowa until their death, during which time the father figured quite prominently in public affairs, having been sheriff and deputy sheriff in Des . . .

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. . . Moines county for sixteen years. At the time of his death he owned one hundred and sixty acres of land in Orono township, Muscatine county. He passed away in 1863, having survived his wife for thirteen years, her demise occurring in 1850.

         Unto Mr. and Mrs. Brown were born nine children: Edwin B., who is married and farming in South Dakota, where he owns one thousand acres of land; Henry, who died at the age of four years, while Mr. Brown was in the army; Cora, who was fourteen months old at the time of her demise; Horace, who is married and follows farming in Durham, Missouri, where he owns some fine property; Myra, the deceased wife of Louis Norris, who is a foreman in the Denver & Rio Grande shops at Grand Junction, Colorado; Julia W., the wife of Sully Blake, a farmer of Muscatine county; Hugh, who is a resident of Wiley, Colorado; Vesta, who married Ivan Hadley, of Muscatine, Iowa; and Lucius, who married Blanche Shellebarger and is now residing in Letts. Realizing from his own experience the disadvantage of a limited education, Mr. Brown sent all of his children through high school.

         Fraternally Mr. Brown is a member of the Masonic order, being affiliated with Letts Lodge, No. 545, A.F. & A.M., which he joined in 1874. In politics he is a democrat but has never been an office seeker. He is one of the highly respected men of Letts. Despite the hardships and handicaps he encountered as a young man he has conquered by sheer force of his own determination and has attained the goal where many a man, possessing better early advantages has failed.