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The Brown Family

Charles Buchanan Brown
1858 – 1896

We never knew our Grandfather Brown. He died when my mother was eight years old so she hardly knew him either. I can't remember her ever talking about him. Grandma Brown was pregnant with our Aunt Zola when he died. Mother told us that she had to drop out of school to take care of her baby sister and watch over her two younger brothers so that Grandma could work as a housekeeper at the local hotel and support the family. (Family conversations and albums)

Finding Charles Brown was difficult. Large areas of what is now Oklahoma and Arkansas at that time were Indian Nations and records were not kept. However, in June of 1890, Governor George W. Steele, the first territorial governor of Oklahoma, ordered that a census be taken of the territory. From this record, we found that Charles was born in Arkansas.

We then found him in the 1880 census living with his parents, Oliver and Sarah in Spadra, Johnson, Arkansas. It is interesting that his father was named Oliver and he had a sister named Ollie (which I suppose is the feminine equivalent of Oliver). Charles named his first born daughter (my mother) Ollie Brown.

Going backwards, a search for Oliver Brown found the family in Clarksville, Johnson Co., Arkansas in the 1870 census. Charles was 12 and we found that Oliver was born in Tennessee and Sarah Jane was born in Arkansas.

In the 1860 census, they were living with a family named Hicks in Pittsburg, Johnson Co., Arkansas.

In the 1900 census, Charles B. Brown (our grandfather) was married to Mary Elizabeth and living in Pryor Creek, Cherokee Indian Nation. Living with them were the five Eldridge children by her previous marriage and my mother (Ollie Brown) who was just two years old. They had a total of four children pictured at right before he died.

My grandfather, Charles B. Brown, died in 1906 in Pryor Creek, Cherokee Indian Nation (which became the state of Oklahoma in 1907).