Background and Family
John Brown was born in County Londonderry, Ireland in 1738, and about 1750 his family emigrated to Pennsylvania. He matured there and taught school in Lancaster County.
In 1770 he married Jane McDowell (1750–1833), the sister of Joseph McDowell. The couple settled into frontier life near her brothers. They built a farm on the banks of the Yadkin River in Surry County, North Carolina. They would have eleven children: James (1771), William (1774), Elizabeth (1776), John (1780), Ann (1782), Hugh (1784), Hamilton (1786), Thomas (1788), Margaret (1790) and Allen (1793). Elizabeth would marry James Stewart who became a U.S. Congressman. Most of their children would extend the frontier even further, moving to western Virginia and Tennessee.
Read more about this topic: John Brown (North Carolina)
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or family:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is as when a migrating army of mice girdles a forest of pines. The chopper fells trees from the same motive that the mouse gnaws them,—to get his living. You tell me that he has a more interesting family than the mouse. That is as it happens.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)