Minnie Edna Brown

Minnie Edna Brown, second of the five children of Emma Ann Martin and Cullen Penny Brown, was born 24 August 1878 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 Martin at the age of only eighteen years in July 1879. The next to pass was Edna, who died 15 October 1879, having lived the whole of her brief life in Martintown. She, like Abraham, was buried in the Martin graveyard at the top of the hill overlooking her estate house and mills. The departed pair would be joined in January 1880 by little Ida Ellen.

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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