| Notes |
- The book, "Early Life on the Western Reserve" is written by a descendant of Ephraims, giving details of letters that were written to relatives and children of Ephraim over a course of many years after they left Westmoreland, Cheshire County, NY sometime around 1814/1815 when he purchased a large block of land in Bloomfield, Turnbull County, Ohio. It is through this book I have collected all the names and birthdates.
The book is rare. Only 150 copies were made. The one I have, I purchased through an Antiquarian book seller.
The book discribes Ephraim as a portly man of almost 6 feet tall, ruddy complextion, brown eyes, expression intelligent and composed. It also mentions that a "portrait in well executed ivory miniature, done in 1805.
The short waisted, double breasted coat in which he appears, with its high rolling collar and brass buttons, the ruffled front and voluminous neckwear, and his dark locks and youthful countenance recall at once the representations of Commodore Perry, perhaps, or most any other of the more familiar personages of his day and years."
When Ephraim was a young man, it is said tha he was on the staff of the governor of New Hampshire, and was addressed as Colonel, as the superscriptions of his earlier letters in the book also show. This title, however, soon gave way, in Ohio, to that of "Squire", which, by the custom of farming countries, was still bestowed on the owner of any extensive acreage, and thereafter, he was always thus addressed and referred to. Ephraim also was a soldier in the war of 1812.
Mr. Brown's interest in public concerns is plain from the correspondence; as to these, he had strong convictions, reached always by his own demonstable thought. The evidence at hand mostly relates to national parties and politics.
He early committed himself against the tyranny and injustice of secret organizations, and after the Morgan episode, from a Mason himself, he became a pronounced anit-Mason. He was long aligned with the party of Henry Clay, and in sympathy with its country-wide plans. In 1825, he went to the Ohio legislature, and again, in 1832, when, as he writes, Mr. Whittlesey was chosen for Congress by a majority of a thousand, and he himself was elected, as an anti-Jackson, or, as such were soon to be designated, a Whig senator from the district. He was very much against human slavery. "Not even the least plausible excuse can be offered in favor of Slavery. I challenge it from any person whatever. By the peculiarity of their constitution, it seeems as tho' the God of Nature designed that portion of the Globe included in the torrid zone for the people of color. Perhaps, you will laugh at my Yankee principles, but, I who am willing to put up contented with what can be got from honest industry, shall never be laughed out of them. I have been taught from my cradle to dispise Slavery and will never forget to teach my children, if any I should ever have, the same lesson, for
'Tis Heaven's high gift, 'tis Nature's great gift
That none be Slave whom God himself made free.
Squire Brown's activities in the Underground Railroad were well understood at the time, and long afterwards, incidents about them were published in the local histories and newspapers, and even in metropolitan journals.
Ephraim was nearly seventy years old when he died in Bloomfield on April 17, 1845. Brownwood cemetery where he is buried is the land he donated to the township trustees...a total of 4.47 acres to be used for that purpose and is named after his family.
Sweet Child Voice in the Wild
Mr. Ephraim Brown, of North Bloomfield, one of the early wealthy men, came one season, left men there to build his house, while he went back for the winter. There were no women in that neighborhood. One Sunday morning in June of the following year as his men, with some neighbors, were sitting in the sun in the opening about the house, they heard a sound. They all listened. They recognized a baby's cry. One of the men said afterwards, "That was the sweetest sound I ever heard in my life." Of course, he did not mean that the distressed baby's voice was so pleasant, but he knew that where a baby was, a mother was, and where a mother was a real home would be. Great traveling preparations were made by the emigrants. One woman in Connecticut baked her oven several times full of bread, dried it, rolled it, and packed it in sacks that it might serve for food on the journey. Upon arrival, families sometimes slept in the ox-cart, but more often slept under bark roofs, keeping their clothing and provisions near by in hollow trees. One of the first things these pioneers did, if they came in the early spring, was to clear a little patch and start a garden. Men struggled for a chance to make garden then as boys and men struggle now not to make them. Almost all of them brought seeds, and so carefully did they have to plan not to have heavy baggage, nor to be burdened with small bundles, that apple seeds were sometimes brought in the hollow cane which they used as a staff. The second act was preparing logs for the house. Some of these buildings had no chimney, no doors, no windows. It is surprising to find in how many cases this is true. Women cooked meals at the side of chestnut stumps for weeks and months at times. In many cases men were so occupied in other directions that they gave little attention to domestic conveniences of any kind. Record is had of several women who, in despair, made ovens of clay and mud in which to bake their bread. Before that, they had had to stir their bread on a fresh hewn log and wrap it around a stick or a corncob. Their children were set to holding it and watching it as it baked and browned. Children, in those days, were like children in these, and some of them carefully watched the bread, baked it evenly, while others who dropped it in the ashes or burned it were chastised for their carelessness. The result was the same in those days as now; the careless child did not grow any more careful, and the careful child did most of the bread-baking. One of the study foremothers, a Farmington woman, who had a poor fireplace in her dingy cabin, and who loved to prepare good things to eat for her family, became desperate because her husband procrastinated in building an oven for her. She said she had baked bread and done all her cooking in one big iron kettle and she was tired of it. She, therefore, fashioned some bricks of mud, burned them in some way, and constructed an oven which was such a success that people traveling her way stopped to see it. Men and women, by temperament and environment, were the same in that day as this, and some husbands were thrifty, loving, temperate and just, and some were quite the opposite; some women were clinging, tender and childish, while the majority were not. The forefather was really the monarch of the family, and when the food was low it was he who braved the storms and the cold to bring provisions from Pennsylvania; nevertheless, he was neglectful of the smaller things. On many farms even in late days there were no cisterns. All water had to be caught in tubs as it fell from the roof on a flatboard leading into barrels and tubs. These receptacles naturally must stand near the house, and the mosquitoes hatched therein were conveniently near their feeding grounds. Women carried their clothes to the nearby creeks and washed them, laying them on the grass to dry. The well was often far from the house. If there chanced to be a spring, the stable was invariably put nearer to it than the house. Within the recollection of the writer, a farmer who kept five men and whose wife did the work, either thoughtlessly or purposely neglected to keep her supplied with sufficient wood. Several times the housewife threated to get no dinner unless wood was brought to her. This threat was not effective. She knew and the men knew that there was plenty of cold food in the pantry with which to satisfy themselves. One day when the husband came home to dinner with the hired hands he was obliged to step over two rails of his choice fence which were sticking out of the doorway, the other ends being in the stove furnishing fuel for the dinner. As this rail fence was his pride and as rail splitting was hard work, he always thereafter delegated one of his men to keep the wood box full.
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1775 - 1845 (69 years)
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