Biographies with Warren County Connections

I Phebe Brown daughter of Caleb Brown and Mary Adams Brown was born in Peru, Essex County, New York, July 5, 1809. My father and mother were born in the state of New York. They were married in Peru, N. Y. near Plattsburg. Mother's grandfather was Irish. My grandfather Brown was a native of Connecticut. Mother was left an orphan at the age of five years. When I was nine years old I wanted an English Reader awful bad and father said if you will walk down to Anderson's Falls, which was 3 miles, you can get one. It was on Sunday but they were Quakers and sold the book to me. While using it I wrote "Steal not this book, my honest friend, For fear the Rope will be your end." I paid 75 cents or $1.00 for this book. I had only one other book besides it, Webster's Spelling Book.

In 1820 father came to the State of Ohio to look at the country and in 1821 we moved. I was twelve years old in July and we started to Ohio (in wagon) Sept. 22; we arrived where Butlerville now is on November 6.

I was married to James Cleland Sept. 16, 1827, at Edwardsville and moved to the mills on Toods Fork Nov. 12, the day of the eclipse of the sun. We had about a wheel barrow load to move. The first meal of victuals I got, James went and got a tall dish of corn-meal an I made patty cakes from it, uinsifted, unsalted and baked in a dutch oven. Mother lent us a bedstead, 3 knives & forks and plates. We had a bench and a stool and sometimes Mrs. Crandall would let us have a chair. I burned a piece of corn, boiled water in the dutch oven and with these made coffee, in the borrowed tea-pot. James had a cow and I milked in that same tea-pot. We hadn't many clothes to wash; I washed them in the barrel that was sawed in two and rinsed them in the creek. I had no blueing. For a while I hung them on the fence then we got a grape vine.

In February James was paid a barrel of whiskey for his work. He sold it and got a set of knives, forks and plates and a tea-kettle. Oh stars! I was as rich then as _________ but I had no cupboard.

When James thought he had enough money to pay for his farm he wanted to go and get his deed; he was afraid he hadn't enough money, so I went to market, I had a pailful of pickles, 7 pounds of butter, 1 bushel early potatoes and l/2 bushel of peas in the pod and 8 chickens. James borrowed a one-horse wagon for me to go in. I wove a piece of linsey to pay a man for grubbing the field where the orchard now stands. When James bought another 40 acres we moved back to the mills to get money to pay for it. One winter we were pretty hard put to it for money and James got a hickory tree and made splint brooms, which he sold in Cincinnati. Caleb was born in '49 and we went to Cincinnati in '51 and bought the first cook-stone I ever had; It cost $20. We mustered up everything we could rake and scrape to made a load to take to market to help pay for it.