In 1885, the story of Little Lord Fauntleroy was published as a serial in St. Nicholas Magazine, a popular children’s magazine in the US. The author was Frances Hodgson Burnett, who later wrote The Little Princess and A Secret Garden. Burnett lived for a short time near Eliza Brownlow in Knoxville before she and her […]
Annie Brownlow Patrick’s Wedding Dress
Annie Brownlow Patrick’s wedding dress was donated to the Healy House museum in Leadville, CO, in the early 1960s by my grandmother, Dorothy (Annie’s daughter-in-law). Since then, the Healy House collection was transferred to the general collection of History Colorado (formerly the Colorado Historical Society). By the time the dress got to Denver, they had […]
The Reminiscences of Mary Jane Patrick Birge
In amongst the notes and letters and pictures that my mother has collected about the Patricks and the Brownlows, I found a copy of some reminiscences that Mary Birge wrote down. I don’t know when she wrote it. It came from a granddaughter of Mary’s brother,William Knox Patrick (5). Her father is James Knox Patrick […]
James Brownlow Leads Naked Men to Victory!
James Patten Brownlow was youngest son and the third of seven children of William G. Brownlow and his wife, Eliza O’Brien Brownlow. When the Civil War broke out, James and his elder brother, John Bell Brownlow, joined the northern forces to fight against the Confederacy. As you will read, James was an outstanding leader and […]
Annie Brownlow and Her Friends
Here is a picture of my great-grandmother, Annie Brownlow with some friends in 1867, when Annie was about 12 and her friends were 11. Annie is the one in the middle. I had trouble reading the name of the girl on the left, but the girl on the right is Anne Mary Maynard. When I […]
Baby Patrick, the Missing Heiress
As mentioned in the previous post about James and Fannie’s marriage and divorce, the custody court case for Camille took three weeks, 176 witnesses, and 4 days of arguments. It is a sensational story that would fit right in with today’s sensational news coverage. This story had “legs” as the old newspapermen used to say. […]
The Marriage and Divorce of James and Fannie
James McCall Patrick (3) seems to have had the bad luck in the family. His quarry businesses never did well. His mines, except for the Colonel Sellers, never made much money, and even the Colonel Sellers had problems (see Bowman vs Patrick). His marriage was unhappy and ended when his wife died young. His only […]
Educating Anne Brownlow
Annie was the only one of her sisters to attend a Female Seminary which I describe in this post. Her obituaries all mention how educated she was and Leadville newspapers listed her among the attendees of the many intellectual gatherings in town during 1881-1892. I have discovered that her education was not only from the […]
African-American Press and W. G. Brownlow
I just subscribed to a new (to me) newspaper service, Accessible Archives which has a fairly large collection of African-American newspapers. I was very surprised that the first article to come up when I put in “Brownlow” was a very favorable obituary of W.G.B.! It was printed in the Christian Record, published by the A. […]
Knoxville Marble Company
I have always wanted to know how Annie and Will met. How does a young woman from Knoxville, who went to school in Philadelphia, meet a young man from St. Louis? What if they met in Washington, D.C. in 1874 when Will was there to interview for a position on the Newton-Jenney Expedition and Annie […]
