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Judah Brown has always been a bit of a mystery in our family. He had a long lasting relationship with a girl, with their first daughter being born when both were just 16 years old, and he was already serving as a soldier in the Civil War.
Almeda Tickner, the mother of his child, evidently never married him, although she did end up marrying at least 3 other men, including one who killed himself by drinking a glass of carbolic acid while proclaiming that his wife was not faithful to him. |
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In 1880, Judah is listed in the Waupaca County, Wisconsin census with his 3 minor children, on a farm next door to his Mother.
No one in the family had any record of his date and place of death, and after I found his long lost love Almeda in Ohio, I assumed I would be able to locate him not far away. Until recently, I had no luck.
Then, another perusal of the census indexes on line reveals him in an 1895 Iowa state census in the 7th ward of Sioux City, Iowa. He was living with Zaranus Appleton and his daughter Anna. He was listed with no religious affilation, and as having served in the Pennsylvania Infantry, Company G. There is a record that he may have also been in Company M, 1st Wisconsin Calvary. I have yet to resolve this conflict.
Part of the confusion may be that family records always showed him as Judah Fuller Brown, although whenver a middle initial is listed in any census record I can find, the middle initial is always a "J". I'm beginning to think that his middle name is another family mystery, along with the story of Almeda "running away out west" and abandoning her children to her mother-in-law in Wisconsin. (Almeda died at age 82 in Geneva, Wisconsin after wearing out at least 3 husbands.) |
