First of all, how have 10 years gone by since I last posted to this blog? So much has filled those years, but not much pertaining to Brown research. But now I've turned my attention to trying to identify Hannah, the wife of my ancestor, Josiah Brown. Many public trees and some old hand-me-down information say that Hannah was a Hildreth, but there has been no proof of that. And of course, now I'm trying to sort apart DNA matches in hopes of helping this effort.
So in the course of this process of DNA sorting, I came across two DNA matches who both seem to be related to John Milton Brown, 1832-1899. This John Brown married Cordelia Fletcher around 1865 and they had eight children from 1866-1883. According to family lore, this John Brown had no middle name until when in business he found he had to distinguish himself, and so took the middle name Milton!
And how does this John Milton Brown fit into my family tree? It turns out he is an unaccounted-for son of John Brown and Sarah Jones, this John Brown being the brother of my ancestor, Josiah Brown. The 1840 census of John Brown in Elmira, Chemung, NY had shown that his household included two males ages 5-9, and I could never account for one of those two. Now thanks to DNA-matching, we know who the missing male was!
So it's good to get reacquainted with the Brown genealogy, and welcome the discovery of new relations to this line.
