Biographical Information - Wilcox / Jones Township
RASSELAS WILCOX BROWN
Among the early settlers of Elk county, probably no man was
better known or more highly esteemed than Rasselas Wilcox Brown.
Mr. Brown was born at German Flats, Herkimer Co., N.Y., September 30, 1809, and
was one of three children born to Isaac and Polly (Wilcox) Brown. When Rasselas
was sixteen years old, his father moved to Onondaga county, N.Y., and located
upon a tract in the town of Cicero, which Rasselas helped to transform into a
productive farm. Upon this farm is located the cemetery, where at his own
request Mr. Brown was buried. It is a beautiful spot overlooking the village of
Cicero and the surrounding level, prairie- like country, and contains the
remains of several generations of the Brown family. Mr. Brown united with the
Baptist Church, of Cicero, when eighteen years of age, and adhered to that faith
throughout his life. He was married September 25, 1832, at Fort Brewerton, N.Y.,
to Mary P. Brownell, the only daughter of Jedediah and Eunice (Watkins)
Brownell. She was born at Trenton, Oneida Co., N.Y., September 23, 1815. Like
her husband she early united with the Baptist Church, and has adhered to that
faith ever since. At the present time (1890) she is in good health, and her mind
is as vigorous as that of most women at fifty. She has been, and still is a
woman of wonderful energy and unconquerable ambition. No matter in what society
she might live, she could be nothing less than the acknowledged peer of the
truest and best. No sacrifice was ever demanded, or ever could be demanded,
which she would not cheerfully make for her husband and children. She enjoys the
esteem of all who know her, and she glories in the unquestioned affection of all
her children and children's children.
Immediately after their marriage this couple settled at Fort Brewerton, N.Y.,
where they lived two years, and then moved to Summer Hill, Cayuga county, where
they lived for about three years. In 1837 Mr. Brown, in company with his
brother- in- law, Judge Brownell, now of Smethport, McKean county, started on
foot from Cayuga county to seek his fortune in the then western wilds of
Michigan. On their journey thither they passed through the wilderness of Jones
township, Elk county. Here Col. W. P. Wilcox, his uncle, had a few years before
located, and he became exceedingly anxious that Rasselas should settle near him.
After two or three months passed in the journey to Michigan, the two travelers
returned and decided to cast their lot in the wilds of Pennsylvania. It was late
in the fall when they returned, and after employing a man to hew the timber, and
leaving with him the means to prepare for the erection of a house early in the
spring, Mr. Brown returned for his family. So poor were the mail facilities at
that time that the letters from his friends in Pennsylvania advising him of the
absconding of his hired man did not reach their destination until he had started
with his wife and two little boys, for their new home, which they reached on
March 16, 1838.
With a will and energy that would not brook defeat, he went to work, and on
April 21, a little more than a month after his arrival, he was able to move into
his new house. The desperate effort and great anxiety required to get his family
under roof, resulted in his prostration on a bed of sickness, to which he was
confined more than six months. Slowly recovering from his illness, the terrible
truth forced itself, day by day, upon him that his eyesight was seriously
impaired, and that the injury to his eyes would be permanent. Now came the time
for his young and hopeful wife to show her worth and her ability. Would she
prove equal to the occasion? It was evident that her husband could not for' a
long time, at least, perform the manual labor necessary to clear and cultivate a
farm, and they must, therefore, seek some temporary employment where her skill
and energy would count for the support of the little ones. The Williamsville
Hotel offered such a place, and thither without delay they moved.
They remained at the hotel until the spring of 1841. During a good share of the time the two did the entire work required to care for their guests and the traveling public- the provisions and supplies for whom had to be hauled from Smethport or Olean, and sometimes from Buffalo. This, of course, demanded the frequent absence of Mr. Brown, and threw upon his wife burdens that none but the most heroic of women could or would have endured. No wonder that both felt relieved when the spring of 1841 came, and they again assumed the sometimes more exhausting, but always more agreeable, toil upon the farm. Here they lived together until the death of Mr. Brown, which occurred on June 27, 1887. At the time they moved onto the farm the children had grown to four, in number, and there was, if the wolf were to be kept from the door, to be no rest from labor and anxiety. The tract of land, out of which it was proposed to make a farm, was located mainly in the midst of a dense growth of pine and hemlock. To be sure the land was cheap, costing only $1.25 an acre, but the labor necessary to fit it for cultivation was enormous.
There was no mill near to cut logs into lumber, and no market for
the lumber if it could have been cut. In those early days there was, therefore,
no alternative- both pine and hemlock must be burned to ashes. The struggle was
constant and sometimes desperate, but never a failure. If the farm failed by
ordinary means to make both ends meet, they always found some effective plan to
supply the need. Sometimes the scheme had little profit in it, but if it availed
to tide over a present difficulty, it was resorted to with cheerfulness and
satisfaction. At times the plan hit upon was to manufacture by hand the pine
trees into shingles; at others, to dig coal from a mine opened on the farm, and
then to market these wherever a purchaser could be found- often fifty, and
sometimes one hundred miles away. That the purchaser would only pay in goods,
and at exorbitant profits, was little reason for breaking off the trade. The
waiting ones at home must be supplied, and therefore the product must go for
what it would bring. Many times during the first years upon the farm at Rasselas
(this name was given to the place in honor of its owner by Gen. Thomas L. Kane,
president of the N.Y., L. E. & W.R.R. extension, when it was built through
the farm and a station located thereon), butter as good as housewife ever made
was taken on horseback to Ridgway, sixteen miles distant, and sold for 10 and.
12 cents a pound, store pay, the whole proceeds amounting to less than would be
the expense of such a trip in our time.
Isolated as was the home reared by this couple, it was in many respects a model
one. The children, six in number, three boys and three girls, were taught not
only obedience and respect for their parents, but kindness and love for each
other. Self- sacrifice was the paramount law of the household. Nothing within
the range of a possibility was ever left undone in behalf of the children,
whether it pertained to their present needs or education and proper development;
and in return the parents received homage as abiding as life itself. All alone
in the wilderness, the family altar was kept burning, conspicuous by contrast,
and yet its influence all the more enduring, because it was unique. The entire
number of children born to Rasselas W. and Mary F. Brown are still living. The
daughters are Olive J. Moyer and Eunice A. Hewitt, of Elk county, and Mary A.
Allen, of Cicero, N.Y. The sons are Jefferson L., William Wallace and Isaac B.
Sketches of the three sons will be found in this volume as follows: those of
Jefferson L. and Isaac B., immediately after this of their father, and that of
William Wallace, among the biographical sketches of Bradford, McKean county.
Mr. Brown, notwithstanding the loss of his eyesight, was a leading mind in the
county. In politics he was a Whig, and all alone in his neighborhood he
cherished, as only a Whig could cherish, the names of Washington, the Adamses,
Clay and Webster, until the new era added to the immortals the names of Grant
and Lincoln. There was but a single supporter of his political views in Jones
township, and yet during the larger, part of his active life at Rasselas, he
held the office of magistrate, often by the almost unanimous voice of his
neighbors. As a partisan he was never offensive, but he was as firm and
unyielding in his political convictions as any man ever was with Scotch blood in
his veins.
Of his affliction he seldom made mention, and he was never known to complain,
save, when in the days of his country's peril, the loss of his sight precluded
the possibility of his enlisting in her defense. It was his inability to serve
as a soldier that induced him to yield to the persuasions of his youngest son,
and allow him to enter the army at the early age of sixteen years, although his
two other sons and two of his sons- in- law had already entered the service. To
him the Republic was "a thing of beauty and a joy forever," and there
was nothing in the earth so good or so sacred that he would not have freely
sacrificed for her glory and her defense. With the close of the war and with his
declining years came more rest and contentment. Though from choice he labored
constantly until the last year of his life, the railroad, long looked for, had
come, and with it a market for the forest still preserved, and this brought the
means for such comfortable support as dispensed with the necessity of further
toil or anxiety. Idleness had no place in his life. Every hour not given to
labor was devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. Unable, from loss of his
eyesight, to read, he, invoked the aid of others to read for him, and in this
way was able to keep abreast of current events, and to live in the history of
the past. He had a very retentive memory, and possessed a fund of information,
especially concerning the geography, political history and-development of his
country, truly wonderful.
As the end of life approached, he gave most abundant assurance to those about
him, that long ago complete preparations had been made for the voyage to the
country beyond. There was a brief, but comprehensive direction for the care of
his surviving widow, a "share and share alike" to his children, a
request that he might be permitted to sleep with his fathers in the land of his
boyhood, and then a calm, majestic waiting for the final summons. Just fifty
years to a day from the time the subject of this sketch, weary and foot- sore,
came into the wilderness of Pennsylvania, he was borne in solemn triumph back to
the burial place of his fathers. It is the mighty power of steam that carries
the train as on wings of the wind! During the fifty years of Mr. Brown's sojourn
in Elk county, that power had revolutionized the world! Henceforth the pioneer
shall not go forth into the wilderness alone. Steam shall go before, and shall
prepare the way for him. And yet, with all the aids to success which modern
thought can bring, none who triumph in coming time will leave more honored
heritage, or fall asleep amid the incense of love more sincere or more abiding
than did Rasselas Wilcox Brown.
Source: Page(s) 745-759, History of Counties of McKean, Elk and
Forest, Pennsylvania. Chicago, J.H. Beers & Co., 1890.
Transcribed February 2007 by Nathan Zipfel for the Elk County Genealogy Project
Published 2007 by the Elk County Pennsylvania Genealogy Project