The Mystery of George Brown

One of the most exciting finds in my grandparents' trunks was a handkerchief.  Yep, a simple handkerchief.  

George Brown's life has been a mystery  One of the best parts of researching family history is the journey. Sometimes the journey's end is anti-climatic. Sometimes the journey's end is a treasure. Whether ho-hum or a treasure, finding the answer to a long lingering question, it is the BEST!  And the handkerchief gave me  answers to long my lingering questions about George Brown.

Growing up, Greenleys were always tall.  I was one of the tall Greenleys.  At 6 feet tall, I was told I took after my great grandmother, Mary (Brown) Greenley (1867 -1938), who was also six feet tall.  Looking at the old pictures, I realized our "tall" gene was not a Greenley gene, but in fact, came from my great grandmother.  She married Elsworth Greenley, who was not tall.

So I started looking at the Browns. Mary had two brothers.  Mathew (1858 - 1911) and George (1855 - 1881). When I went to Iowa a few years ago, one of my goals was to find out more abut this family. In the Cottage Hill cemetery, I found the graves of Mathew and his parents.  But George was not buried at that cemetery.  I even went to the local library to search for obituaries.  No George Brown listed.  I did discover Mathew died a bachelor in 1911.  

Searching for George Brown, born in 1855 in Iowa, was frustrating.  Ancestry.com brought either too many results - or results did not match.  The last record I had of George Brown was the 1880 census.

The Brown household in Dubuque County, Iowa in 1880:

Name	Age
Joseph Browm	49
Jane Browm	45
George Browm	24
Mathew Browm	22
Mary Browm	13

As you can see in the above chart, George Brown was living at home with his parents and his two siblings.  

A few years ago, my uncle sent me some items he had found in the family bible.  One of the items was a school award given to George Brown.  On the back of the card, was a hand written note.  "Uncle born Geo. Wm. Brown Oct 3, 1855   Died (killed) July 8, 1881, by falling rock."

WOW!  The answer to my question!  

Reward of Merit present to Mr. George Brown circa 1860.

He probably never married.  So the story ended with a falling rock when he was 25 years old.  My niece, Paige, who was living in Iowa when I visited, wondered where a falling rock would have come from in the flat Iowa landscape.  That observation was very astute come to find out.  My presumption had been that he died in Iowa, since he had been living there in 1880 census.  Well, I discovered that was an incorrect assumption.  (Assumptions are dangerous things in genealogy.)  

In the trunk I found this very cool handkerchief.

Handkerchief belonging to George Brown

The note with the handkerchief adds a piece of information that I didn't have before.  George Brown was killed by a falling rock in ... South Dakota! So I went to ancestry.com, to search with that additional information.  I found a picture of his gravestone.  And he was killed, by a falling rock, in DEADWOOD, South Dakota! 

George Brown's grave marker in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.

I do wish I had a picture of George Brown, but haven't found any.  But it does make a good story.  Having a relative who lived and died in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1881, makes me want to go back and watch all those movies!

History of Deadwood, South Dakota  and yes, George Brown is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, the same cemetery as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

Memories of Grandpa by Dale Greenley

My older brother, Dale Greenley, has written about our grandparents.  Born in 1946, he is one of the oldest grandchildren, and grew up in Roseburg, with grandparents nearby.  The following memoir is about our Grandfather, Ansel R. Greenley.  Dale gave me permission to post this on the blog with the warning that not everything was fact checked.  This is a memoir, not a work of journalism, but provides valuable insight into our family's oral history.

Grandpa Greenley was a large man.  Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall with a full head of upright snow white hair and crystal blue eyes, he was an imposing figure.  On top of that, he was an ornery old cuss.  When he was sitting in his easy chair in the corner of the living room beside his big wood-laminated Philco console radio, his grandkids quickly learned that climbing into his lap would not result in a loving hug.  That was what Grandma was for.  Grandpa was born in Independence, Iowa in 1892. The family later moved to take over a large cattle ranch near Wagon Mound in Northeast New Mexico.  Grandpa and his younger brothers were raised as cowboys. 

As kids in the early ‘50s, cowboy and Indian games and movies were our favorite pastimes.  Grandpa, however, always took the shine off of them by telling us that no real cowboy would dress the way they did in the movies or abuse his horse by galloping all over the place.  Much to our chagrin, he relentlessly found fault with every facet of our beloved cowboy and Indian heroes.

With the onset of WWI, Grandpa enlisted in the Navy and with typical Greenley communication habits, he didn’t learn about his father’s death until he returned to the ranch after the war.  What he found was the ranch in disarray and his younger brothers fighting about it.  The good thing he found there was Mary Maddux, the ranch cook whose brothers were cow hands on the ranch.  He married her and in February of 1921, my dad, Robert, was born.  After years of struggle, the family lost the ranch and Grandpa moved his family North to Rocky Ford in Southeast Colorado.

The struggle continued as the Depression hit and his family grew to include three more sons and two daughters.   All I know about this period is what little my dad, not a story teller, mentioned on occasion.  Grandpa had a Raleigh route, selling household items door to door, similar to the Avon of today.  Dad told about the flat, dry, dust-blown landscape and the abject poverty they lived in.  The only good part of life he recalled was the great Rocky Ford watermelons in the summertime.  In 1936, Grandpa got a job as a cook at the Roseburg Veteran’s Administration.  How he managed that from Colorado, I have no idea.  He loaded all the family and possessions on an open wooden-wheeled flatbed trailer pulled by a 1929 Ford pickup and headed for Oregon.  It took them 5 months, working along the way for gas and food and enduring the death of one of the twin brothers. It was not an easy trip.  When I complained about the work dad had me do as a child, he would say that compared to harvesting sugar beets, what I had to do was a snap.  One of the things they had done along the way was to work in the sugar beet fields in Idaho.  Dad said it had to be the worst work in the world.  Also, I remember using the derisive term “Okie” to describe some undesirable person and Dad gently reminded me that the only difference between him and an “Okie” was just a few miles of flat, brown prairie.  Unfortunately, I didn’t read the “Grapes of Wrath” until after Dad died.  There are many questions I wish I’d have asked had I realized what they went through to get here.

1953 - Ansel Greenley on the job at the VA Hospital

Grandpa with his sons in 1967
Bob, Ansel, Everett, Bill

When the Greenley family finally arrived in Roseburg in August of 1936, Dad was 15 and thought he’d died and gone to heaven.  They found a beautiful blue-green river full of fish flowing through a town surrounded by green forested hills and inhabited by numerous deer and other small game.  At that time, Harvard Avenue was bounded by big truck farms that were open for post-harvest gleaning so all the fruits and vegetables you needed were free for the picking.  Dad said that after coming here, it was the first time in his life he hadn’t felt constantly hungry.  After some time, Grandpa settled his family in a two story white house on the corner lot of Harvard where Long John Silver’s now sits.  When I was a babe-in-arms, Grandpa and Grandma bought what we would now call a shack, perched on the side of the hill at the end of Broad Street overlooking the airport.  It had a small kitchen and bath, a living room and a bedroom.  An attic was accessed by steps from a hall way that connected the garage, all heated with a wood stove in the corner of the living room.  The house was perched on posts, making the area under the house a good place for skunks to live.  My memories of Grandpa and Grandma Greenley’s house include the faint skunk odor that always permeated it.  A significant part of their life on the hill included maintaining a large garden and gathering fire wood.  Using a buck saw, Grandpa fell Madrone trees on the hill, drug them down to the house, then bucked the logs into firewood and stacked it inside the garage.  I find it ironic that 60 years later, I am doing the same thing to gather my firewood.

Grandma and Grandpa were long-time Adventists.  Ancestors had been involved with the formation of the church in 1863 so their roots went deep into the church.  They followed Ellen White’s prescription for a long and healthy life by being vegetarians.  Grandma was much more fervent about it that Grandpa.  At Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners, Grandpa could be caught snitching pieces of turkey when he thought no one was looking.  Also, when the house on the hill was torn down, the spaces between the studs in the garage were filled with 20 years’ worth of empty Copenhagen cans, remnants of Grandpa’s days as a cowboy.

After Grandma passed away in 1967, Grandpa sold the hillside property and we moved him into the little house I had been raised in on Bradford Street.  In 1969, while I was in Korea, he passed away in his big easy chair beside his beloved Philco radio.  A radio that now resides beside the easy chair in my house. 

circa1965 from left to right: Grandpa (Ansel Greenley), Ross, Susan, Grandma (Mary Maddux Greenley), Dale
in front: Marianne and Lance