Floyd Brown
great grand uncle
Floyd and Rachel with Eddie and Charles Lee on the porch
John Waggonfield Brown & Margaret Melissa Jane Trett
| |
Floyd Allen Brown-1905
|
Ira Edward Brown-1894
|
Elisha Kane Brown-1921
| |
Kathleen Elizabeth Brown Hill-1947
| |
 |
| Floyd second from left |
Floyd and Rachel Brown were a sweet love story. Rachel had been married to a man who beat her. I don’t know the story of how or when she met Floyd but two years after his first wife, Essie Shrable, died, they were married and Rachel became a mother to his two daughters. They had a little girl who died at birth. Rachel kept the most beautiful home. She made beautiful quilts and pillows and every room was a delight. Mom and Dad always pointed out to me how beautiful her home was – in detail -- each time we visited so that Rachel could hear how much they loved and valued her.
Floyd was Grandpa Brown’s youngest brother. e is pictured here furthest to the left with friends. After Floyd died, his daughters decided they deserved an inheritance, so they came in and took whatever they wanted from his home. They went so far as to take the hose from the side of the house that Rachel used to water her garden. Fortunately he had set things up so that the house and property went directly to Rachel or they would have left her without anything.
Rachel outlived Floyd by 17 years. She finally became too frail to garden and care for herself and spent the last days of her life in a care center.
When we visited the farm we looked forward to visiting Floyd and Rachel and going swimming in their creek. It was also a good place to go fishing, so Grandpa would head one direction to go fishing and we would head the other direction to go swimming.
Then there are the two stories about Uncle Floyd that I recorded in The Farm Story as follows:
(Kathi) John thought of two other cool stories. They are both about Uncle Floyd. Whenever any kids visited his place, he would say, “Look at that horse’s head!
 |
| John with Benji the dog and a friend |
Don’t you just want to get up there and touch it?” And then he would put them onto the horse, backwards and ask them, “Where did the head go?!” And when they didn’t know what to say, he would pick them up, turned them 360 degrees so that once again they were facing the tail end and then he would ask again, "Where did the head go?"
The other story is that Uncle Floyd loved his hound dogs. He had some step-grandchildren who, when they came, had hit the dogs and been rough with them, so Floyd never let any kids near them after that. But when John came my mom assured Floyd that John would be good with the dogs. And he was. The dogs just loved him. He petted them and hugged them and talked to them. John was a very little boy at the time. Uncle Floyd said, "John has tamed the dogs again."
 |
| Floyd |
 |
| Rachel |