A Remarkable Story About Rachel Brown
ADVENTURESS’ BUILT TOMB FOR MOTHER AT ROME
By R.C. Hall
HERALD ADVERTISER – SEPTEMBER 25, 1932
Submitted by Shelia Brumfield
In the hills of Lawrence County, Ohio, not far from Proctorville, there is a neglected grave around which revolves a romance the details of which are more unbelievable than many of the imaginary deeds recorded by the most ingenious writers of ultra-modern fiction. If anyone doubts this statement or is inclined to consider it exaggerated or overdrawn, he has only to investigate the matter to be fully convinced of its truth., according to the reaction of those few to whom this writer has related orally the story and the authority upon which it is based.
Some information can be obtained from the tomb mentioned above, although the greater part of the story itself relates to the daughter whose remains have rested there now for over three-quarters of a century. The spot has for many years been the picture of desolation but shows every evidence of the expense, time, and care that once was lavished upon it.
A rectangular lot, similar in size and shape to an ordinary cemetery lot was once laid off there, a low stone wall erected about the edge and the interior filled with soil so that the whole gives the appearance of a slightly elevated and once carefully graded burial plot. It was then surrounded by an iron fence of the type commonly employed for such purposes, while the grave itself was marked by a headstone, or monument, of no cheap or, mean proportions, considering the time and place of its erection. Within the enclosure and near the grave, were also placed two chairs of metal of the type sometimes found in similar spots elsewhere, or on some lawns, or in city parks.
The tomb located several miles from any town, in a region not thickly populated, across the creek from the main highway, with no provision made for its upkeep, soon fell into neglect, after the last near relative of the one buried there had passed away.
NEGLECTED
Today the fence is a mass of ruins, the chairs have fallen victim to rust and decay, the monument has toppled to the ground, and the whole place is grown up with brambles and weeds so that it is hardly noticeable to the passerby who is unfamiliar with its whereabouts, and ignorant of or uninterested in its history.
But if you are interested, you may locate the spot by inquiring at one or more of the farmhouses along what is known as the Little Paddy road above Rome and five or six miles from Proctorville, and when you have found it, if you will push aside the brush and weeds and search among the ruins you may find the broken monument which once marked this lone grave.
Then, if you remove the dirt and moss and are careful to observe the engraving thereon, it will be found to read as follows: “To the memory of Rebecca White, Widow of John J. Brown, departed this life, November 15, 1851, in the 57th year of her age”.
But do not stop there. Try and decipher the remaining words on the stone which run as follows: “Hushed the winds and still the evening gloom. Whilst I’ll return to view My Mother’s tomb and scatter flowers o’er the Dust I love. Farewell, dear Mother. A little while we part, to meet where peace and pardon bind up the broken heart”.
The name and address, Harris, Ironton, Ohio, also appear on the monument as does that of the contractor who erected it.
This epitaph reveals the fact that the monument was erected at the behest of a child of the deceased, and this is the story of the life of this child, a daughter, that is so unique and romantic as to merit the attention of all those interested either in fiction or history.
STORY IS TRUE
It must be clearly understood that the story itself is actual history, substantiated in part by the statements of a few persons still living who know some of the details and can remember the daughter herself, in part by old newspaper articles relating some of her deeds, and in part by court proceedings which resulted from litigation over her property after her death, as well as by other means which will be suggested later, but the relation of which just now might lessen interest in the rest of this article.
From such sources, it seems that John Brown and his wife Rebecca White Brown lived for a time in Ironton, Ohio, where their children were born and named Clinton, Sarah, and Rachel, respectively. There is nothing in the record to indicate that any one of them performed any deeds out of the ordinary for children either in the realm of behavior or of intellect, at least not during that period of their lives which is definitely spoken of as childhood, although before their youth had faded, it appears, they had indulged in many escapades, some of which, to say the least, could hardly have had the approval of the more desecrate and law-abiding members of society.
It was about this time that the affair which had been brewing for some time between the United States and Mexico came to a crisis. War followed and as is generally known resulted in a great military victory for the United States, although it is not so generally agreed that this nation won at the same time a great moral victory. But on the question about the causes of war, its justification, and its results, about which there will always, perhaps, be differences of opinion, we have nothing to do here.
UNSETTLED QUESTION
Whether or not the United States was justified in taking the vast territory, from Mexico that she did forms a part of this general and debatable question, but whichever side one espouses he can hardly help admitting, it would seem, that she paid liberally enough in cold cash for it, according to its valuation and condition and known wealth at that time. But please bear in mind that this considers only its KNOWN wealth.
For scarcely had the land come into possession of this country when gold was discovered there, which discovery-had it been made before the transaction had been completed? It might have put an entirely different complexion upon both the treaty and the price paid.
The discovery of gold in California had the greatest effect upon the history of our country, an effect which the most optimistic can hardly claim was entirely good, Not only did it cast a greater cloud upon governmental relations with Mexico, which were already shady enough; not only did it contribute tremendously toward bringing the slavery question to a crisis, and not only did it hasten the settlement of the far west, but it contributed much of the change that moral standards underwent, at least among certain classes during the past three-quarters of a century.
This statement is not intended to attribute present-day conditions as a whole to the discovery of gold. It is not even stated that these conditions are worse now than at other times in our history. This again is a debatable question and belongs in the realm of argumentation rather than narration.
But the temptation to get rich quick, especially coupled with the prospect of a long and exciting journey across the plains, attended by buffalo hunts and Indian fights, was bound to be almost irresistible to youths of a certain type, and this in turn was bound to influence the lives of families and individuals to no small extent throughout the settled sections of the country.
YOUTH HASN’T CHANGED
At least such was bound to be the results unless youth was very different in that day from what it is today, and it certainly will not be stepping beyond the bounds of history to remark that the records fail to show such an appreciable difference,
Of all sections of the country that felt the call of the far west, none felt it stronger or was less able to combat it than the Ohio Valley. If there is anything whatever in the case of inheritance, the young people of this region inherited the venturesome spirit of the frontier frown which they were removed scarcely a generation, while their parents and grandparents could hardly offer valid objections to emigration to the “far” west when they themselves had been immigrants into this now “middle” west. Accordingly, a number of young men joined the “Army of Forty-Niners” in its march across the plains to California.
Among those from Ironton, who felt this call to the west too strong to be resisted, was Clinton Brown, and he left his friends and home to seek his fortunes around the Golden Gate. But Brown was not the only one of his family who determined to strike out on his own responsibility to make fame and fortune for himself. Had he been, perhaps, he might never have attained enough of the former to have become known beyond his little circle of acquaintances, however successful he might have become in amassing the latter.
But in those days, women were so seldom thought of in connection with a home and the duties of wife and mother than whenever one did win a reputation in any other line of endeavor, it was a matter of sufficient note to cast a sort of glamour over her whole family, in many instances. But when two sisters set out from the home to make their own way in the world, especially if this appeared in no way necessary, the effect it generally had upon their acquaintances is best described perhaps by the word–“shocking.”
THEIR FIRSTS ALIASES
Such doubtless were the feelings of the acquaintances of Sarah and Rachel Brown when they left Ironton to make their own way in the world. The two girls went first to Cincinnati, and there apparently began that amazing assumption of fictitious names which has been chiefly responsible for the difficulty in tracing their history with certainty at all times.
Whether this was an eccentricity characteristic of the family, or at least of that generation of it, or whether the adoption of aliases had a sinister motive, matters little, in this instance. However, it did have some bearing upon later developments in this unique family.
At any rate, Sarah and Rachel Brown dropped the name of Brown after they settled in Cincinnati and took the name of Stevens. It seems that they prospered rather indifferently in Cincinnati, where they lived in what was known as Bank Alley.
One of the sisters did not survive long after taking up her home there, and the other one, still apparently possessed of a roving disposition and also perhaps influenced by the fact that her brother had gone to California, decided to go there herself. It was soon afterward rumored that she too passed away and as time went on all three-the brothers and two sisters became little more than memories to their acquaintances and as these too gradually passed away, the sensational trio became practically unknown about their old hometown.
Meanwhile, their father had died, and their aunt-their mother’s sister-had married James McVey. McVey was a pioneer resident of Rome Township, Lawrence County, Ohio. He was a carpenter by trade and built or helped build many buildings in Rome and Union Townships.
He built the woodwork of what was known as the McCall home, a large and fine old brick structure that stood on the bank of the Ohio River about three miles above Proctorville and which was struck by lightning and burned several years ago. He also built the house owned and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. R. W. Wilhelm in Proctorville.
BECAME A FARMER
He was a man highly respected by his acquaintances and his wife must have been quite a kindly and neighborly soul, for she was universally known as “Aunt Polly McVey,” and indeed is so referred to by a few of the older inhabitants of that neighborhood to this day. They settled on Paddy Creek, where Mr.McVey took up the duties of a pioneer farmer in addition to those of a carpenter.
And so it was to the McVey home that “Aunt Polly’s” sister, the widow of John J. Brown and the mother of the three Brown children mentioned, came to pass her last days on this earth. There was nothing remarkable in this, of course, and as the citizens of Paddy Creek had perhaps never heard even a rumor of the past records of the children of Mrs. Brown, it was not thought particularly strange when a daughter put in an appearance on the scene also.
In fact, had the past history of the Brown family been known in the neighborhood, it would not have required much imagination to have come to the conclusion that the report of the death of both of the daughters, had been “slightly exaggerated.”
To be sure, this daughter’s name was Fanny, or at least it was given as such, but we have already seen and shall see more clearly in a little while that names sat rather lightly with her and she was as content with one as with another, so long as it served her purpose at the moment.
Now, as we have been from the inscription on the broken monument at her grave Mrs. Brown passed away in the year 1851, and her daughter, who may as well be called Fanny as anything else, took care to see that her grave was carefully marked, which evidently proves that, in spite of what anyone may think of some of her actions, she was not insensible to the sacred influences of a mother’s love. On the contrary, it seems that this was at least one influence of her early years which she never outgrew or tried to outgrow. But to return to her career previous to 1851.
BECAME WEALTHY
As we have already seen, one of the Brown girls went to California at the time of the famous “gold rush.”
And although she was later reported to have died, since the records seem to show the existence of no other sisters in the Brown family, and since, after Fanny Brown became known in Lawrence County, it was ascertained that her record fits perfectly with that of the other girl, it seems almost impossible to escape the conclusion that they were the same.
For according to the reports of legal proceedings years afterward, Fanny Brown went to California in the year 1849, the year of the great gold rush. Although she perhaps did no prospecting or mining, she seems to have been wise enough to get he share of the “coin of the realm” which others did mine, although there is nothing whatever to prove that she acquired wealth in any other way than strictly legal methods.
That is, Fanny’s methods were legal for the time and place in which she was doing business, although few persons familiar with a hotel, restaurant, and public house, generally, as they were conducted in certain towns, would hold up such a place as a standard of moral perception. And it was such a public place that Fanny Brown, or whatever she chose to call herself at the moment, opened and managed for some time under the name of the “Sacramento Palace.”
But although this venture opened with prospects of success, and although its proprietress did apparently get rich from it, or at least laid a firm foundation for her fortune, it ended disastrously and with a suddenness so characteristic of a number of business ventures in mining camps.
Such a place naturally became the headquarters of all the gangs of outlaws which swarmed about such settlements as sprang up overnight and had made no provision for law and order. The honest prospectors and miners were frequently outnumbered by swindlers, highwaymen, and rascals of every conceivable kind.
WAS HANDY WITH GUN
In such a society, all had to rely upon their own weapons and the quickness of their hand and eye to protect themselves and their property, if they had any. Women were no exception, and although there were few even in such a society depraved enough to injure a woman, the exception to the rule and the effects of liquor even upon a slightly class were sufficient to cause the few women frequenting such places to rely upon the usual method of self-protection. The heroin of this sketch seems to have been no exception to this rule, and if one may judge from the results, she had soon become no mean hand with a gun.
Among others who frequented such places as the “Sacramento Palace” were the stage drivers who, of course, found them excellent places to use as depots. Such men were probably above the ordinary in such places, i. e. above the ordinary for honesty and uprightness, otherwise, they could not have held their positions, but it was no easy matter even for them to steer clear of an occasional brawl so that it was nothing out of the ordinary when one of them one day got into some kind of an altercation with the proprietress of the “Sacramento Palace”.
The outcome, however, was something out of the ordinary, for the “boss’ of the place enforced her side of the argument with a gun. In fact, she was “so quick to draw” and her aim so certain that, for the instant, it looked like the stage driver had engaged in his last argument.
The gun user seemed to think so too, and in the panic of the moment, she sought refuge in flight, Whether or not her precipitate retreat was merely the natural result of her deed which she instinctively abhorred after it was committed or whether she really believed that her safety had been endangered by her act is not certain. It is certain, however, according to the information available, that she tried to escape.
THE VICTIM DID NOT DIE
Now it has been suggested that such places were not noted for enforcement of the law. In fact, they seemed to have no law, yet some things were understood to be against the general welfare and were prohibited by general consent, and one of these things was the killing of human beings, especially if the one killed happened to be popular with the masses of the citizenry, in which event the fact that the killer happened to be a woman did not alter matters in the least.
For the enforcement of these laws which the camp or settlement chose to enforce there was a sort of self-constituted court that went under various names. In this particular settlement, it seems to have been known as the vigilance committee. It seems never to have occurred to these self-constituted guardians of the law that they have actually been outlaws themselves, or if such a thought ever did cross their minds it never seemed to trouble them.
Perhaps the best of them had simply come to the conclusion that necessity knows no law, and yet was equally convinced of the truth of the paradox that society cannot exist without law. As a matter of fact, the settlement had outdistanced government, and perhaps these men were not to be blamed for supplying some semblance of law until the government could catch up.
But the results in this as in all similar cases prove the unreliability as well as the undesirability of such an arrangement. For in the excitement of the escapade, the friends of the stagecoach driver were much more interested in taking vengeance upon his assailant than in ascertaining the real extent of his injuries and consequently, the poor woman came dangerously near paying the penalty for a crime she did not commit, for the man was not killed after all.
FACTS ARE CLOUDED
Whether or not the vigilance committee discovered this in time to alter its intention of hanging her is not certain, for it would be difficult to ascertain the exact facts in such a case even under more favorable circumstances, but her liberty was not at any rate until a gambler named Rube Rings [Raines] came forward with money either in payment of a fine or to assure her appearance until further notice.
Two things are worthy of note in this connection. One is that the heroine was not destitute of friends, even those who possessed influence and power in the community, and second that it was doubtless due to this influence and power that she was released from custody, for there is ample evidence to prove that if her freedom had been a mere question of money, she could easily have bought her own release.
One proof of this statement was not long in appearing in the story of her subsequent career. For hardly was she well out of the California escapade when she took a trip to Panama and from there went on to New York. This was in 1863, and although prices had risen rapidly since the outbreak of the Civil War, she seems to have lacked nothing of wealth and luxury that she desired. Perhaps it was her show of wealth rather than her personal charms that attracted the attention of a man named Abe Hinkley who evidently soon made a good impression on her.
At any rate, they were married, and what is more important as an indication of her real faith in him, if not her love for him at that time, and of his real intentions in marrying her, he persuaded her to transfer to his keeping a large share of her wealth represented by certain diamonds valued at one hundred thousand dollars. This transaction is also worthy of note because it reveals the fact that she had salvaged no mean amount of wealth from her adventures up to that time.
FOUNDED OWN BUSINESS
Hinkley pawned the diamonds for twenty thousand dollars to the Wells, Fargo Express Company. This was the forerunner of the American Express Company and a pioneer in its line of business, a business that was quite popular just at that time. It seems that Hinkley was influenced by its great success to start a similar concern of his own–his wife’s money.
This affair of Fanny Brown Hinkley with her husband Abe Hinkley shows that her career up to that time was far from being a financial failure, whatever may be said of it in other respects. Her subsequent movements also indicate that however great inroads Hinkley may have made in her fortune she was still far from poverty and almost immediately we find her embarked upon another adventure.
Mrs. Hinkley, as she may as well be called now, meanwhile had fallen in with another girl from her old home state. This girl’s name was Henrietta Page of Gallipolis, Ohio, and for a time the two seem to have been closely associated and went together to Havana, Cuba.
But the former, always inclined to “play her own hand,” soon returned to the United States, or to be more exact to that portion of it then claiming to be the Confederate States of America. It may have been her desire to gain entrance into that beleaguered section of the country, which inspired her trip to Cuba, although this seems doubtful as her connection with the Confederacy, at least in an official capacity, did not begin until after she had established herself in New Orleans.
As the above statement suggests, our heroin now began to play what may have become an important part in international affairs. This was the result of her meeting a man named Will Stevens who had a commission from the Confederate government to act as its agent and to go to Europe and purchase ammunition or other war supplies for the Confederacy.
ANOTHER CONQUEST
This name–Stevens–appears rather frequently in the story, doesn’t it? Did the dates of its appearance more nearly coincide there might be some reason to suppose that its appearance at this point had something to do with its adoption by the Brown sisters back in Cincinnati? But at this conclusion would evidently necessitate the proverbial placing of the “cart before the horse,” it must be passed without further consideration.
Once again this peculiar woman proved her power of attraction for those of the opposite sex, although again it may be doubted if her own personal charms were responsible for the fact. Just as there is a strong suspicion that her wealth was the principal attraction for Hinkley–especially since he dropped from the picture so soon as he had gained possession of a large share of his wife’s money–so, in this case, it was probably her ability to assist him in his governmental activities that attracted Stevens to her. He doubtless saw in her cleverness as well as in her love of the spectacular, an ability to play just the role he desired someone to play for him.
Accordingly, Stevens, for whom she seems to have had one of her ephemeral attachments, persuaded her to don the garb of a man, and being a total stranger in the vicinities into which they now went, it was easy for her to impersonate a young gentleman whom Stevens introduced to his acquaintances his nephew who bore is the name–Will Stevens. Just what plans he had in mind, nobody knows. He may have intended for his supposed nephew to play the role of a woman at times and of a man at others, depending upon whether a man or a woman would be best qualified to obtain the information he desired at the moment.
PLOTTED TOGETHER
At any rate, the two must have plotted together very cleverly as spies for the Confederate government; at least they must have to convinced no less a personage than General Magruder, for they had gone to Texas where that commander had been placed in charge of the Confederate department of the west which, according to southern claims, embraced what is now Arizona and New Mexico in addition to Texas, but over which vast territory, he had, of course, only nominal jurisdiction.
While at Houston, Texas, Stevens and his supposed nephew were arrested as spies, their activities evidently being of such a nature as to arouse the suspicion of local authorities not appraised of their real intentions, and to lead to the suspicion that they were Union spies.
The fact that their immediate release was ordered by no less a personage than General Magruder, commander of the military department, practically confirms the belief that they were in the employ of his government, especially when it is known that Stevens had already been entrusted with such an important mission as the purchase of military supplies in Europe.
Unfortunately for them, Stevens died suddenly shortly after that and his “nephew” was again arrested, but as those were the days of confusion in the south attending the closing days of the Civil War, it was difficult to get at the exact facts or justify as legal any acts of government until the authority of the United States could be once more established.
According to reports, there was ample reason for arresting her, in view of the sudden death of Stevens and the added fact that the money and papers he was known to have possessed had disappeared. However, there was no real proof that the woman had anything to do with them, so after she was handed over to the Louisiana officials they held her for a time and then set her free again.
TOOK THE NAME OF SEYMOUR
She now adopted the name of Seymour, and from then until her death in 1895, she made her home in New Orleans. She had both made and saved some money in her various ventures up to that time, for she began to invest in real estate in Louisiana and Florida. In view of the wonderful developments in those states following the Civil War, it is easy to imagine where much of her subsequent wealth came from.
It was during this period that Fanny Brown, as she was still known back in Lawrence County, Ohio, began to dazzle the eyes of the rural folks on Paddy Creek with her visits to her mother’s grave. Although she came and went in the splendor which seemed almost regal to those unused to the ways of wealth, her affection for her mother was doubtless sincere, or why would she have left the comfort and luxury of her New Orleans home to make what at that day was bound to be a hard and tiresome trip back to Ohio, and spend quite a sum of money and especially her own personal supervision to the arrangement and maintenance of her mother’s tomb?
It seems that she became quite a spiritualist and stories are told of her claiming to have placed the chairs near the grave so that she could sit in one and her mother in the other when the latter returned from the Great Beyond to converse with her.
For this reason, one gentleman informs the writer, that when he was a boy he would not go within gunshot of the place. Her interest in the better things of life was also shown by her will, which left all her great fortune including 200 lots in Florida to churches and charitable institutions.
However, as she apparently had no heirs, the state claimed the property, and then, Clinton Brown put in an appearance and claimed it as her brother. Much litigation followed so that it is safe to say that no one profited much by the wealth of this adventure extraordinary, the ruined tomb being her sole memorial in the state of her birth.
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