| Where Did You Come From . . . ? |
| by Adeline R. Preston |
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| How many of us, searching for our roots, have said to a bygone ancestor, "Where did you come from...?" I Imagine almost everyone has. That is how it is with my great-great grandfather, Daniel H. B. Brower. About 30 years of his life is open to me and the rest is a mystery. I don't even know what the H. B. stands for. |
| My mother talked frequently of her Uncle Dan who had a newspaper in North East. She really didn't know too much about him, only hearsay handed down through the family. She was so proud because he had written a book "Danville Past and Present." |
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| Dr. D. H. B. Brower was selling his newspaper in Chesapeake City and moving to North East to start another. |
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| In 1983, my curiosity was aroused when I found an excerpt of a 50 years ago column in a local newspaper. It stated that Dr. D. H. B. Brower was selling his newspaper in Chesapeake City and moving to North East to start another. |
| Well, this called for some action. Family members that we talked with had very little to offer. I did learn that he had a brother who was a homeopathic doctor and another brother was an editor or publisher of a Philadelphia newspaper. My sister, while visiting in the Washington area, went to the National Archives to read the Pennsylvania census. She had a stroke of luck. Daniel H. B. Brower, wife Jane, children Rosa (my great grandmother), Wilbur, Anna, Imogene, Elizabeth, Imelda, Daniel H. B. and Mary were listed in the 1860 census of Montour County. From the census we knew he was born in Pennsylvania about 1815, but who were his parents and from where he had come, we did not know. |
| My sister and I went to the library in Elkton and read census records of Cecil County. In the 1880 census, Daniel H. B. was listed as an editor, Jane, a housewife, and daughter, May, age 21, a compositor. Son Wilbur, an editor, Sarah his wife, and Wilbur Jr. were listed in another household. Son Daniel, who had worked on the Chesapeake City newspaper, was not in the county at this time. |
| Progress stopped. Then I had a brainstorm. I would copy Brower names from telephone directories. My daughter typed a letter with our information, and I began to send letters to the names I had gathered. One person sent my letter to his father in Ohio. The father, Mr. Kenneth Brower, did a lot of Brower research, but he could not connect old Daniel H. B. with anyone in his files. We carried on quite a correspondence for about five years until he became ill. Mr. Brower also sent me a list of Brower names. Soon I was writing to Browers all over the country. One man called from Philadelphia to tell me his grandfather's name was Thomas H. B. Brower, Harry Bartholomew, but his grandmother couldn't recall any Daniel H. B. About 50 percent of my letters were answered and all those stamped self-addressed envelopes that didn't come back! |
| I tried another tactic. I sent for Rosa Brower Biddle's death certificate. Rosa didn't leave the county when the rest of the family moved. She was married to John T. Biddle, son of Andrew and Elizabeth Marquis Biddle of North East. The only new information was the maiden name of her mother, Jane Kennedy. |
| My mother had the book "Danville Past and Present." I borrowed it, because I wanted to see what sort of man Daniel was. He moved to Danville, Pennsylvania, in 1855 with his wife and five children. Two children, Daniel and Mary, were born later. Newspapers must have been in his blood. He started the "Montour American," but sold it in 1859, repurchased it the same year and sold it again in 1864. Also in 1864, he assumed control of the "Montour Herald" which he sold sometime in 1871. Later in 1871, he established "The Medium," and it was sold to the D. V. Publishing Company. In the spring of 1872, he was again in the office of the "Montour Herald" as editor and secretary. |
| Fortune didn't smile on him. The paper was sold by the sheriff. 1873 wasn't so great either. He published the "Mentor" and it was abandoned in a year. The owner of the "Danville Record," Mrs. Fowler, employed him from 1876 until March 1878 when she sold the newspaper. |
| What made him come to Cecil County is a mystery. He came to Chesapeake City in March 1878 and had a newspaper until December when he moved to North East. That was the beginning of the "North-East Record." He thought that North East should be hyphenated. |
| He was also writing his book which was published in 1881. This leads to something else. My mother said her Uncle Dan had the newspaper and wrote the book. My conclusion is that it wasn't her Uncle Dan, but her great grandfather, Daniel H. B. Brower. Somewhere in the telling of the story, her great-grandfather Daniel and his son Uncle Dan were mixed up. In hearsay, that happens quite frequently. |
| The North-East Record was sold in February of 1882. Daniel H. B. and Jane evidently went back to Danville. Wilbur was to take a job with the "Morning News" and was to move his family to Wilmington. Mary later turned up in Washington and so did Wilbur and Imelda. By the way, the newspaper office was on the second floor of the Roney building, which is now Herb's Bait and Tackle Shop. |
| My impressions of Dr. Brower are varied. I think that he adored his family and was proud of their accomplishments, especially working together on the newspaper. He was a firm believer in education for boys as well as girls. He took an interest in local affairs and organizations. He liked to be in the middle of things. From excerpts of local newspapers, he liked to make speeches anytime and anywhere. Dr. Brower was also a church-going man. To me, his writings sound a little pompous, but I shouldn't find fault with that. I was at Salisbury State Teachers College for a very short time, where my English professor said my writing was too flowery and Victorian. Maybe I am a throwback. |
| Michael Dixon is president of the Historical Society of Cecil County and keeps notebooks on just about everything. We were discussing old newspapers one day, and I mentioned my great-great grandfather Daniel H. B. Brower once had a newspaper in North East. Mike showed me his notebook on newspapers and his article on Dr. Brower. I learned for the first time that he had died in March or April of 1886 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, probably at the home of one of his daughters. Mike was as excited as I was, and he let me look at several copies of the "North-East Record" that are in the Historical Society. I was so overwhelmed. I had no inkling at all that my great-grandmother Rosa was one of the organists at the North East Methodist Church, or that she was a music teacher. No one in the family had ever mentioned her musical ability. |
| From the Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg, I learned last year that Daniel H. B. was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Legislature in October 9, 1849. He represented Butler County in the western part of the state. What was he doing there? I though he served a two-year term, but other sources say two one-year terms. He was also one of the original members of the Pennsylvania Editorial Association. |
| With all the buying and selling of newspapers, maybe he should have chosen another field. He surely wasn't very successful at those ventures. Why not politics? Didn't he like his first encounter with government or wasn't that successful either? Maybe he was always searching for something that eluded him. No matter where you came from, Daniel H. B., I would like to have known you. |
