Minnie Edna Brown

Minnie Edna Brown, second of the five children of Emma Ann Martin and Cullen Penny Brown, was born either 24 August 1878 (calculating from her age on her gravemarker) or 30 August 1878 (the date in the Wisconsin Birth Index) in Martintown, Green County, WI. She was one of two granddaughters of village founders Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader born that month. The other was Ida Ellen Warner, whose parents Nellie Martin and John Warner also resided, like the Browns, along the north bank of the Pecatonica River on what had been part of Nathaniel’s estate until eighty-acre parcels of it were given away as dowry gifts to his daughters. The Martin clan must have felt blessed that year. Sadly, they would feel just the opposite the following year, as three tragic and altogether untimely deaths occurred in quick succession. The first in the sequence was the demise of Edna’s uncle Abraham Lincoln “Linky” Martin at the age of only eighteen years in July, 1879. He drowned in the river. As winter set in, a diphtheria epidemic swept through the region. Edna was one of its victims. She died 15 October 1879, having lived the whole of her brief life in Martintown. She, like Linky, was buried in the Martin graveyard at the top of the hill overlooking her estate house and mills. In January, 1880, the epidemic was still raging. Ida Ellen Warner became another of its victims, and her remains another addition to the ground of the little cemetery.

Edna’s full name was Minnie Edna Brown, but her first name was almost never used and she is referred to simply as Edna Brown in almost all records. Even her gravemarker omits the first name.

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