Cousin Joyce contacted me a few days ago wanting to know if I could locate a connection between our Brown ancestors and the Abolitionist, John Brown. Perhaps there is but that connection may go far enough back that I am unable to discover it. Sure, I could copy someone else’s tree, but what if that someone else is wrong?
It was time for me to verify some of the data I already had copied from someone else many years ago but I’m just now studying the data. That’s where the errors began to jump out at me.
Years ago, Joyce’s mother, my great-aunt Glor (as we called her) shared with me our connection to Oliver Brown, a Revolutionary War veteran who was present in New York when the statue of King George III was toppled as well as the Battle of Lexington and possibly Concord. Oliver – whom someone gave the middle name “Templeton” – Brown and family moved from Massachusetts to what is currently Wellsburg, Brooke County, West Virginia. Oliver Brown and wife Abigail Richardson gave birth to a daughter Catherine who, when she came of age, married Stephan Colwell allegedly in 1812 Brooke County. I say allegedly because I’ve get to recover a marriage record. I was able to locate Oliver Brown Sr and Jr in the 1820 Federal Census of Brooke County and again in 1840, listed in close proximity to Stephan Colwell, born, according to Stephan, in Pennsylvania to an English-born father.
In 1850, Stephan Colwell and wife Catherine Brown are found living in Mason County, West Virginia with a family of 2 male “sons” and 3 female “daughters.” The eldest son, James, is listed as aged 30; son John B(rown) Colwell is listed as aged 26 and, apparently, unmarried. Since John Brown Colwell is my ancestor, I concentrated on locating him in subsequent censuses in Mason County: 1860 – aged 36 years old, now married to Lucinda Duncan, with one-year-old son James Colwell. Next, John B. Colwell is listed in 1870, aged 49, with four children including my 2nd-Great Grandmother (Eliza) Catherine Colwell. In 1880, John Brown Colwell appears in the census one final time, aged 57.
Ancestry threw me a hint for Find A Grave – one that a cousin created – that included a death record for John Brown Colwell, replete with a birthdate that no doubt was calculated from his age listed in the death record. Except the death record gives his age as 70 years, so many months, and so many days bringing his date of birth to 1810. My brain froze because that age is not consistent with the ages given over the last 40 years of census records. In fact, he’d aged about 12 years from 1880 to his date of death in 1881.
I’ve concluded that the MDY on the death record for John Brown Colwell is wrong. I could not guess whose mistake that is, I am only stating that I believe his age at death cannot be correct. Why?
- Looking through the older censuses for his father Stephan, you see John B’s siblings in the household. There are approximate ages but research shows there were 3 older sisters and 1 older brother (James) from 1820 forward.
- In the 1850 census, brother James Colwell is listed as age 30; that’s 4 years older than John B; Sister Abby R Colwell is 2 years older than John B in the 1850 Census;
- In 1860, brother James Colwell is now 40 years old, ten years older than the previous census;
- John Brown Colwell aged about 10 years with each census from 1850 to 1880 and his year of birth is consistently placed at about 1824, not 1810.
- Stephan Colwell would have been – if that date of birth for John B is correct – about 25 years old at the time of John’s birth in 1810 with four older children. It isn’t impossible but it is improbable.
Taking the ages of what is presumed to be his children listed in the 1820 Censuses for Stephan Colwell and forward plus the ages of both James and John B, it is more likely the marriage of Stephen Colwell and Catherine Brown is closer to 1814 or 1815 with the birth of the first child, an unnamed daughter, around 1816. Based on this evidence, I conclude that John Brown Colwell was born about 1824, not the date listed in his Find A Grave listing.
And the connection I first mentioned? Eliza Catherine Colwell, daughter of John Brown Colwell and Lucinda Duncan, married John William Jacobs, son of William H. Jacob and Mary E. McGraw, on 16 July 1884 in Mason County, West Virginia. Although John William Jacobs lived at Buffalo, Putnam County in 1880, this is just a few miles to the Putnam-Mason County border, likely placing the Colwell’s and the Jacobs’ within walking distance from one another.