Henry Brown, b. ca. 1842, Michigan; to Nebraska by 1874
I have encountered Brown about everywhere I turn, it seems some days. But in the past 20+ years of searching I've never found much beyond the identification of my great grandfather Henry Brown.
He was born in Michigan about 1842, and by 1874 (when son Fred was born) he and his wife Alice were living in Nebraska. The 1880 census for Odessa Precinct, Buffalo County, Nebraska, shows him as a 38-year-old farmer. Both his parents are shown as being originally from New York.
Their third child, my grandmother Birdie Brown was born two years after the census, in 1882, in Kearney, Nebraska. Her mother died when Birdie was 4 and her father gave her up for adoption. Her adoptive father died when she was 11, during the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1893--and her mother died later in a mental institution (and things didn't get better in later years).
But you get the idea. Family history is skimpy at best. Birdie was a Brown, a Worsley, a Clark and finally a Herman
Henry Brown and his wife Alice Baker are the only one of my various family lines that has hit a stone wall in the mid 1800s.
Any new leads would be greatly appreciated, as I turn to Brown (and Baker) one more time.
Incidentally, I have found no connection of this Henry Brown to a Brown line allied rather distantly to another of my ancestral families. It goes back to a Francis Brown of early Connecticut, born about 1625-1628. Wouldn't it be great if Francis turned out to be an immigrant ancestor of Henry?