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INTRODUCTION
On April 9, 1926, the Evening Democrat of Fort Madison, Iowa,
contained the following announcement: -
MRS. BROWN'S BIRTHDAY
An unusual family party took place to-day when Mrs. Maria D. Brown celebrated
her 99th birthday. Gathered about her at the dinner table were her widowed
daughter and her five sons with their wives. The oldest son is 80 years old, the
youngest 56. The combined age of the family group, mother and six children, is
521 years. All are in sound health, physically and mentally. The party took
place at the Brown homestead, where Mrs. Brown has lived for more than a half
century. She presided at the dinner table, asking the blessing in a strong voice
and blowing out the candles on her birthday cake in one vigorous breath. Not the
least among the achievements is the fact that she has kept to her extreme age a
high degree of personal beauty and is still lovely to look at.
This family has on both sides a remarkable record of longevity. Mrs. Brown is
the last survivor of a family of six sisters and one brother, all of whom lived
to be over 70. She was born in Athens, Ohio, the daughter of Eben Foster, scion
of Revolutionary ancestors who had migrated from Massachusetts. Her husband,
Daniel Truesdell Brown, who was also born in Ohio, and was well known in Iowa as
a paper manufacturer, died in 1906 at the age of 84. Considering him and his
wife and their children as a family there have been only three deaths in a
family of 10 in 104 years, his own and those of two infant daughters. Aside from
his death there has been no death in the family for 60 years.
The oldest son, William E. Brown, 80 years old, is still actively engaged in
business in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he is associated with his son,
Knapp Brown, in the automobile business. The second son, Charles P. Brown, 78
years old, is a retired farmer living at Revere, Missouri. The third son,
Augustus P. Brown, 72 years old, who lives in the old homestead at Fort Madison,
was formerly mayor and president of the Brown Paper Company. He is now president
of the Artesian Ice Company. The fourth son, Frank R. Brown, 62 years old, is
manager of the Artesian Ice Company. The youngest son, Herbert D. Brown, 56
years old, lives in Washington, D. C., and is chief of the United States Bureau
of Efficiency. The only daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Davis, 74 years old, is the
mother of Dan C. Davis, lubrication supervisor of the Santa Fe Railway system,
and William Lynn Davis, efficiency engineer of the Staley Manufacturing Company
of Decatur, Illinois.
Following the dinner with her children, Mrs. Brown received grandchildren,
great-grandchildren, and numerous citizens of Fort Madison, who showered her
with gifts and loving attention. It was an exciting day, which she experienced
with great joy and with out undue fatigue.
As the wife of the youngest son, I was present at the memorable birthday
party. Many tender memories filled my mind as I looked over the company of
people assembled to do honor to "Grandmother Brown." For nearly thirty
years I myself had sat at her feet. Into my ear she had poured, from time to
time, not only stories of her own childhood and the infancy of her children and
grandchildren, but also stories handed down from her forebears of their remote
childhood. I mused on the significance of many things she had told me.
Back almost a century her own clear memory stretched and, back beyond that,
by hearsay, her traditions carried her another century or two into the very
beginnings of English colonization upon this continent. It came upon me that she
sat enthroned among us not merely as head of her family, a precious figure of
maternity, but that, in some sense, she had become a historical personage,
symbol of the pioneer age in the development of our great country. Of her like,
few were now left on earth-not more than one in every twenty-five thousand of
our population-who were alive when John Quincy Adams was president. Sprung from
colonists who had settled the Atlantic seaboard, established its independence of
Europe, and then pushed on into the Northwest Territory, claiming it too for
freedom, she herself had joined in the great migration down the Ohio, helping to
carry forward the customs and ideals of the English-speaking world into the
wilderness that lay beyond the Mississippi.
I felt that, dearly as they loved her, greatly as they honored her, it had
hardly occurred to her two score descendants that she represented, in her person,
something bigger than her own family, a complete tradition of many families,
which had significance for the whole nation. I was filled with a desire to take
from her own lips her impressions of the stirring age of which she had been a
part. And so, when the reunion was over, and others had returned to their homes,
I lingered a little longer, sitting beside her every day for two weeks and
taking down in her own vigorous language her memories of life in the past
century. This book is, essentially, the record of that interview, prefaced by
sufficient historical data to make clear the background of her life, and
completed by selections from her letters. The result is not only a chronicle of
typical experience in the life of Woman, but also a panoramic view of an age
seen through the eyes of an individual.
Had Grandmother Brown been a woman of literary attainments, of wider reading
and more varied acquaintance with the great world, her observation on life might
be more interesting to the sophisticated. But the mass of men and women who have
made America have not been literary and sophisticated. They have, however, been
people of ideals, people of courage. What benefits we now enjoy in America have
come to us as the result of the labors of people inspired by ideals such as
Grandmother Brown has cherished, upheld by courage such as she has had. As we go
forward into another period of our country's development, it is well for us to
try to understand the forces that have created us and the world in which we find
ourselves, even though we ourselves are driven by very different forces and are
building up another kind of society based perhaps on a different philosophy of
life. Many of the influences that have affected Grandmother Brown-religious,
political, social-leave me unmoved, but I can understand how they wrought on her
in her day, can understand and sympathize.
Recording her story in her own pungent speech, I have hoped to catch and
preserve for Grandmother Brown's descendants some of the flavor of her
personality; her aspirations, her achievements, even her limitations; her
innocent vanities; her lovable animosities; her patient endeavors. Especially
her summing up as she reviews it all. It is not merely that she has lived a
hundred years-significant as is that fact alone in the history of poor, feeble
mankind-which moves me. It is the fact that she is, after a century of wear and
tear, still a vivid Person. I can see that, sitting on the edge of the world an
peering over, she gets a thrill from that experience as from all others. A pity
to let so much of intelligence and sweetness and gallantry at age ninety-nine go
unsung! The reactions of Nineteen to life we have all heard about many times;
those of Nine-and-ninety we have, as yet, merely divined. To the psychologist-if
not to the poet and preacher-those reactions are, as yet, little known. Perhaps
we may learn from Grandmother Brown the secret of growing old gracefully.
Chiefly, I think of her as a mother. In that experience she has found
understanding of many things. A careful craftsman in all she does, and by nature
proud,-though timid too,-she demands that her pride be satisfied in her
children. It is impossible to tell her story and not refer constantly to her
children, to her hopes and plans and work for them, and their reaction to her
efforts. Otherwise, she has no "story." And, indeed, her story is the
typical story of women. What is noteworthy about it is her attitude towards it.
"Why, what has she ever done that is great?" is a question that
nettled me when I told a friend that I was trying to write the history of my
hundred-year-old mother-in-law. The general attitude of mind reflected by my
friend's question is the thing that makes me want to see published the story of
how one good mother has spent a hundred years. I want to honor a woman not
esteemed "great," one who has the common fate and will be consigned to
oblivion, despite work well done throughout a full century of living, unless
someone like myself can rescue her from it. To read of her may comfort other
women who, passionately and devotedly, but more or less rebelliously, are doing
the duty that Nature points them to, the kind of work which the man-world,
despite all its fine talk about the glory of womanhood, holds so lightly.
As there is no escape from the fact that the first characteristic of
motherhood is suffering, I find, beneath all Grandmother Brown's brave
commentary on life, an undercurrent of sadness. To have lived a hundred years
means that one must have stood often beside the portals of sorrow, must have
heard many times the birth cry, many times the death rattle, must have been
disillusioned and disappointed again and again. But, like proud old Hecuba,
believing in the final triumph of Eternal Justice, Grandmother Brown clasps to
her bosom all that makes up life, all the joy and anguish, the hope and despair,
that have come her way; lives through it all, rises above it all, makes it all
her own. And I thrill as I hear her echo, in her own words, that cry of Hecuba:-
Thou deep Base of the World, and thou high Throne
Above the World, whoe'er thou art, unknown
And hard of surmise, Chain of Things that be,
Or Reason of our Reason; God, to thee
I lift my praise, seeing the silent road
That bringeth justice ere the end be trod
To all that breathes and dies.
WASHINGTON, D. C. H. C. B.
April 15, 1928
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