Making the assumption that I do have the correct line, then Edward Brown was born in Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, in 1835, being baptised there on 26th July in that year. He was the eldest son of Edward Brown, then described as being a publican, and Mary, probably born Mary Avey. Edward and Mary had been married in Chippenham in January 1832 and had 5 known children before Mary died at the young age of 33 in 1845.; the other children being Elizabeth, Frederick, Louis and Mary. Elizabeth married Abraham Moss and had 9 children before she died in 1878, while Louis became Abraham's second wife in 1880, having a single son in 1881. Frederick married Eliza Canham in 1855, had 11 children and died in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 1902, having been a tailor and then a grocer during his working life. Edward's youngest sibling, Mary, married a Thomas Baggs in Marylebone in 1869 and emigrated to the United States in 1876; although Thomas died in 1899, Mary lived on in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until her death at the age of 92 or 93 in 1934. Mary left 2 daughters and a son, all of whom seem to have descendants though, as yet, no contact has been made with any of them.
Frederick's family of 11 children have proved difficult to pin down. Two certainly died in infancy but the rest are more problematic; the children of only one, the 6th child George, have been found with any certainty and they know nothing of the earlier generations.
Going further back, the Edward Brown who married Mary Avey in 1832 was, himself, probably born in 1811 as a son of another Edward Brown and his wife, Sarah who had been born Sarah Talbot but been previously married to a William Reynolds. William died in 1805 and Sarah married Edward Brown in 1806. While Sarah had had 2 sons with her first husband, one of whom died in infancy, she had a further 10 with Edward Brown, the lines of whom have been traced to varying degrees.
Edward was a son of a John Brown and Catherine Gunstone, baptised in Chippenham in November 1777; that this is the correct line is shown by the Will of Edward's sister, Catherine, which names several of Edward's children as being her own nephews or nieces, and by the Will of John Brown, Edward's brother, who died in 1839, and named both Edward and Catherine as his siblings.
John Brown and Catherine Gunstone were married in Chippenham in August 1774; they appear to have had only 3 children, Edward, Catherine and another John. It seems likely that Catherine came from the village of Worlington in Suffolk where she was probably born in 1739, her parents being William Gunstone and Dorothy Godfrey.
John Brown's antecedents are more problematic but the most likely parents for him are Francis Brown and Margaret Place who married in Chippenham in August 1737. Further details about these 2 are a matter of conjecture though Francis could have been baptised in the village of Isleham in January 1714; this child's parents were John and Elizabeth and the naming of Francis' first son as John might support this origin for him. However, there are several other possibilities. Francis probably died in Chippenham in 1788.
While the line of Francis Brown becomes difficult to follow before his marriage, Margaret Place may well have been a daughter of Stephen and Anne Place, baptised in Mildenhall in December 1719; if this was she, then the line can possibly be traced back through Stephen's ancestry to a Henry Place who married Eleanor Childerston in Mildenhall in November 1582. While this is tempting, the actual evidence is very little and the line must be considered pure conjecture at this time.
OTHER STUFF.
I do know that my father had a brother, Charlie, and 2 sisters, Rose and Kathleen. All 3 married and had children, most of whom I'm in contact with; I will not name them here or give more details although basic information can undoubtedly be found without much trouble. My grandfather, William Percy Brown, died in 1967 after struggling for several years with increasingly poor health. He had joined the 'Paddington Rifles' in 1913 when aged 20 and was an early recruit into the first World War.
William P Brown - standing 6th from left, third row
Exactly what service he did in that conflict is unknown as his record is one of those lost but it seems he didn't have an easy time. In late 1916, he was given a few days leave when his father died and he was sent home in order to sort out the family situation; his mother had died a couple of years previously and he had to find accommodation or employment for his 3 younger sisters. He later returned to work for the 'Gas, Light and Coke Company' (later 'North Thames Gas') for the rest of his career, along the way being able to move away from the poor area of Kilburn where the family had lived for many years by buying his own house in Queensbury in the mid-1930s. He and his wife subsequently retired to live in Ramsgate in Kent but his lifetime working with gas, habitual smoking and possible exposure to gas in WW1 eventually caught up with him. My last memories of him were of an old man struggling for breath as he walked a few yards near the sea front in Dover; he died from emphysema not long afterwards, in Margate.
My grandfather had 8 siblings, only 5 of whom I've been able to identify, although I know that the other 3 died in infancy. The 1911 census, supported by my grandmother's memory, records that my great grandparents, John and Margaret, had 9 children of whom 4 had died by the time of that census; those 4 were the three unknowns plus a John Edward Brown who was born on 6th April 1890 and died just over 6 months later. John Edward was almost certainly the eldest son of the family and his name may well have been an 'homage' to his father and grandfather.
The 5 children who survived were my grandfather (obviously !) and 4 sisters - Margaret born in 1888, Elizabeth Mary born in 1900, Rosina born in 1902 and Hanora Mary born in 1904. Clearly determined to confuse future researchers, Elizabeth was always known as 'Lil' and Hanora as 'Kit', why is anyone's guess; both married but neither had any known children. Lil's first husband, Tom Read, died when his ship, the HMS Eskimo, was sunk in July 1943, while Kit's only marriage lasted little more than 18 months before her husband, Reginald Back, died from illness aged only 37. Lil married again and outlived her second husband also, living to 91; Kit died earlier though still managed to get to 81.
The third of the sisters of whom I was always aware was Rosina, though she was only ever known as Rose. Born in February 1902, she married Thomas Lole in 1923. Tom had a difficult childhood and also a bad time in the First World War but his son, Peter, showed the true spirit of the Browns, and probably of Tom's mother Martha Lole too, and even founded his own insurance company. Peter has told me that his mother was employed for a time by Lord Leverhulme, the man who founded Lever Brothers, the company which later became Unilever. Rose was another who lived to a good old age, not dying until 1992, aged 90.
The fourth sister, Margaret, was an entirely different story. To start with, she was hardly ever mentioned, the only reference to her being the suggestion that she had died at a relatively young age and at about the same time as her mother. It was only when another researcher contacted me with a suggestion that we might be related that she began to become more interesting. Subsequent research showed that Margaret had, indeed, died at a young age but not before she'd married her cousin and produced a daughter. The fact that Margaret was never mentioned, or even known of, by my father and his siblings indicates the extent of the schism which must have existed in the family in the early years of the 20th century.
Margaret's husband, Thomas, was the eldest son of her aunt, Mary. Mary was born in 1866 and seems to have had Thomas in the workhouse in 1884; his father is uncertain but was probably Thomas James Keys with whom she subsequently lived and had a further 6 children, though she never married him. Records of the St Pancras Board of Guardians indicate that Thomas and the next 6 children were, indeed, those of Thomas Keys though they also make it clear that all should have been known by the surname of their unmarried mother, Brown. Thomas Keys died as a result of a rather horrible accident in 1898 and Mary later 'took up with' a William Livett, with whom she had a further 3 children; Livett, for reasons known only to himself, adopted the name Keys for himself and the three children were also known as such even though they, too, should have been Browns.
To return to Margaret, her marriage to Thomas Brown lasted only from March 1911 until March 1914, when she died aged only 25. She left Thomas with a daughter, Margaret Rosina Eileen, but none of this appears to have been known, or admitted, by my father's family. It seems probable that either the multiple children of the unmarried Mary or the marriage of first cousins was the reason for this but whether one, both or neither will never now be known. The only facts are that Thomas remarried in 1917 and had a number of children with his second wife, and Margaret Rosina Eileen had a most difficult childhood. She seems to have been a strong willed child who was eventually rejected by her father's new family; she had a relationship with a much older man with whom she had 2 children and then married a man who died within a couple of years as a result of an accident with a gun while training during the Second World War. Rather shockingly, she and her children were denied attendance at her father's funeral which might indicate the extent of the rift even within her own small part of the family.
I can, perhaps, add a few notes about the family of my great grandmother, Margaret Brown née Sheehan. She was born in Limerick, probably in or near the village of Ballymurragh, in March 1863, and baptised there on 17th March. Her parents were Thomas Sheehan and Hanora Keogh who had married in Newcastle West in October 1860. This family moved to London soon after Margaret's birth and were certainly living in the Bloomsbury area by 1865 where their first son, Michael, was born. They continued to live in Bloomsbury until some time after 1881 and eventually moved to Somers Town; Thomas was a bookmaker and died in 1893, while his wife lived on until 1903, dying after a fall downstairs; whether she was drunk at the time is a question I have yet to resolve. One of Margaret's sisters, Louisa, married a William Field in 1891 and a brother, Thomas, served in the army before marrying in 1915, but details about other siblings are lacking; to date, no descendants of this line have been identified.
So there it is. The potted history of the Browns as far as I know it, although there is much more detail that can be added if anyone is interested !
Researched and written by John Michael Brown.
This research and the associated narrative are the copyright of the author. Anyone wishing to copy all or any parts should seek permission from the author before proceeding.
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