Isabella Elizabeth Brown

1840s–1850s

Born 13 or 15 December 1841 in Hudson, Walworth County, Wisconsin, to George Brown and Jemima. Worked as a hired girl when young.

1860s

Married Isaac Horace Brown in Linn, Wisconsin, on 22 December 1861. Went to Iowa by covered wagon in June 1863, rifle at hand, and bought a log cabin near Spring Creek; daughter Annie was born in 1864.

1870s–1880s

Lived in Parish, New York, then Illinois, and from about 1878 near Saint Paul, Nebraska. Helped support the family with boarders, peddling, and homemade butter, cheese, mittens, and socks. Left Isaac briefly in 1882 for an affair in Iowa, returning in March.

1890s–1900s

Moved between Saint Paul and eastern Colorado, where her son Bert died in 1890. Visited her daughter's family in Fort Morgan often. Left Nebraska for Seattle in 1909.

1910s–1940s

Lived at Joe's Bay, Puget Sound, until 1926; widowed in 1914. Moved to Tacoma and in 1927 to the Frank Tobey Jones Home, where she celebrated her 90th birthday in 1931. Died there about 1941.

A Covered-Wagon Bride

Isabella Elizabeth Brown was born on December 13 or 15, 1841, in Hudson, Walworth County, Wisconsin, the daughter of George Brown and a mother named Jemima. She worked as a hired girl when she was young. On December 22, 1861, in nearby Linn, she married Isaac Horace Brown, a farmer from New York.

In June 1863 the young couple set out for Iowa in a covered wagon packed with salt pork, beans, and dried apples, and Isabella kept a rifle at hand on the journey. Near Spring Creek, five miles from Jesup, she bought a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot log cabin with an elevated-oven stove from a homesick woman who was giving up on the frontier, and there her daughter Annie (Meghan's 2x-great-grandmother) was born in 1864. The family moved on to Parish, New York, where Jake was born in 1871, then to Cordova, Illinois, where Bert was born in 1876, and about 1878 to a farm near Saint Paul, Nebraska. Isabella also had a child named Anty, and two others, Will and Turner, were counted as part of the family.

Saint Paul, Nebraska

Isabella did a great deal to keep the family going. She kept boarders, sold goods from house to house, and made butter, cheese, mittens, and socks to sell. In February 1882 Isabella left Isaac and went to Iowa to carry on an affair with another man. She was back in March, coming home to Saint Paul bringing her sister, Mrs. Ferguson, from Illinois; the sister was so disabled that the doctors did not expect her to recover, but over the next few months she recovered remarkably well in Nebraska. Isabella and Isaac stayed together for the rest of his life. She eased aches with bags of hops warmed in hot vinegar. Isaac was forever on the move, and in the late 1880s and early 1890s they went back and forth between Saint Paul and eastern Colorado, where their son Bert died in 1890.

In October 1899 a visitor praised the "bountiful well-cooked meals" she served her boarders. In 1900 she and Isaac spent three months with Annie's family in Fort Morgan, Colorado, and in March 1902 she hurried there when Annie was seriously ill. In February 1904 she and Isaac nursed each other through several weeks of the flu. In April 1909 they left for a summer on the Pacific coast, and Isabella went on alone to Seattle; Isaac joined her that fall, and by 1910 they had a fruit and poultry ranch at Joe's Bay on Puget Sound, with their daughter Annie's family nearby on Fox Island. In 1914 Isabella was raising Black Minorca chickens and selling their eggs, and she still had the Saint Paul paper sent all the way to Washington.

The Energetic Grandmother

Isaac died in April 1914, and Isabella stayed at Joe's Bay. When her daughter Annie died in 1926, Isabella tried to help her son-in-law, Jay Grahm, keep the Fox Island farm going, but the work was too much for her, and she moved to Tacoma to be near her grandchildren. She took an upstairs apartment in the Cambridge Apartments, with her granddaughters Fern and Ethel on a lower floor, and in the spring of 1927 she moved into the Frank Tobey Jones Home for the Aged. There in December 1931 she celebrated her ninetieth birthday with her whole family, and all the other residents were invited. Her eyesight failed, and she was blind in her last years, but she still got around well on the home's ramps.

Her granddaughter Beulah remembered her as "an avid reader, especially of religious matters. She could quote verse after verse from the bible and tell the numbers and chapter. She was the most energetic person I have ever known and had a sweet outgoing disposition." Her granddaughter Fern called her "a wonderful person, very fast with her work, thrifty, ambitious, and good to everyone she knew." Isabella died at the Frank Tobey Jones Home about 1941, at nearly a hundred, of pneumonia after a fall down a staircase in which she broke her hip.