Biography
Browning's father was an English soldier who escaped from Braddock's massacre (1755), deserted and settled in the highlands of Western Maryland. This community was a wholly self-subsistent one in which the men wore deer skins procured by their own rifles and dressed and tailored by themselves. The women spun and wove flax and wool. The only commodities upon which they were dependent on outsiders was gunpowder and lead for shot.
Meshach Browning married Mary McMullen (1781–1839) on 13 April 1799 at Blooming Rose, Maryland. His military experience was restricted to a brief commission as captain of a company of militia which went into action only once, and that on the occasion of a muster when they undertook to “lick” their commander, with whom they had become disgruntled. (The mutineers apparently got the worst of it.)
Browning became an expert in woodcraft and wild animal behavior and habitats. His pursuit of the abundant white-tailed deer, black bear, panthers and wolves through the "western wilderness" became legendary. This wilderness was the Allegheny Mountains, especially in Garrett County, Maryland and the surrounding regions of what is now West Virginia. After his first wife's death, he married Mary M. Smith, on 24 April 1841 in Allegany County, Maryland.
Browning and his son-in-law, Dominick Mattingly, were selected to collect donations to build a church at Johnstown, Maryland. The result of their labors was St. James Church, dedicated in 1853 under the pastorate of Rev. William Lambert and prosperous for many years.
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—André Maurois (1885–1967)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)