Ethel Irene Brown

Ethel Irene Brown, third of the five children of Emma Ann Martin and Cullen Penny Brown, was born 13 December 1880 in Martintown, Green County, WI. Her parents were then living in a house only a stone’s throw east of the home of her maternal grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader, and the household seemed incredibly rooted, yet by the time Ethel was a few years old, her parents decided to pick up stakes and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the next decade and a half they would regularly visit Martintown and throughout that time they maintained ownership of the house, which ultimately was handed over to Ethel’s eldest sister Lena after her marriage to Frank Opal Hastings, but for the most part they lived in the southern U.S. In the mid-1880s they tried West Plains, Howell County, MO, where sister Lula was born, and by the end of the decade came to Fort Smith, Sebastian County, AR, where youngest sister Ada was born just before Christmas, 1889. After some ten years there -- in 1898, as Ethel was on the verge of turning eighteen -- the family settled in DeQueen, Sevier County, AR. Her father was a sawmill supervisor and the lumber he helped create literally played a key role in putting DeQueen on the map.

1898 was also the year Ethel’s future husband James L. Cannon arrived in DeQueen. A son of Jessie Cannon and Elzira Abbott, he had been born 29 October 1876 in Sevier County near the community of Lockesburg. He had come to DeQueen, located about ten miles northwest of his hometown, after two years at the University of Arkansas. Upon his arrival he purchased the local newspaper, the Bee, and served as its publisher and editor for many years. (Eventually this would put James in the peculiar position of publishing, and probably authoring, the obituary of his father-in-law Cullen Penny Brown, a document used as source material in the creation of this website.) The wedding occurred 10 October 1900, shortly before Ethel turned twenty.

Over the course of the next decade Ethel and James became parents of two daughters, Hazel and Vae (often better known by her middle name, Nadine). The small size of their brood demonstrated the remarkable shift in family structure that took hold in America after the turn of the century, when large farm families became far less common, to be replaced by smaller, more urban households. Though much of the marriage was spent living outside the incorporated part of DeQueen in Bear Creek Township, any farming James may have done was a sideline. He was decidedly a “town” man. He was extremely active in the commercial doings and political life of DeQueen. His position as a commentator and publisher accounted for some of that involvement, but he went beyond that. He was a city alderman for a number of years, is credited with the building of three houses and two business buildings, and served on the school board, including during the period when the city’s high school was built. In late 1900, a few weeks after he had become a married man, he was appointed by Arkansas Governor Dan W. Jones to fill the recently vacated post of DeQueen city clerk, and then was elected to the office in 1902 and went on to serve a full term. He was also president of the local Rotary Club chapter, and was active in the town’s Presbyterian church, including a stint as superintendent of the Sunday school. The nature of Ethel’s daily life during the course of the marriage can easily be pictured. As the wife of a civic leader, she would have been called upon to be a society hostess, church wife, a behind-the-scenes aide to all her spouse’s endeavors -- all while raising their two daughters. It is not surprising the couple chose not to have a big family.

In 1915, James sold his newspaper interests. He became the postmaster of DeQueen, a position he kept for the better part of the next ten years. His social commitments continued strong, however. If anything, he had more time to devote to the good of his community once he no longer had to deal with the logistics of a generating a publication week in and week out. In the early 1920s, James became involved as an organizer of a network of farmers so that the latter could ship their produce economically by banding together with colleagues who owned trucks. At first he did so on behalf of Sevier County growers, but as his reputation grew, his efforts took him farther afield. While on a trip to Avery, TX in February, 1926, he caught a bad case of the flu. As his recovery lagged, it became clear that James was suffering some sort of heart trouble. He became bedridden. Even then he refused to abandon his grower-trucking-association organizing, his responsibilities having increased as crops started ripening in the early summer of 1926. Finally his heart could not take the strain. He passed away in the very early morning hours of Sunday, 26 July 1926. A measure of his dedication and workaholic nature is recorded in his obituary -- published in the successor of the very newspaper he had once run -- which stated that on Friday, the 24th, he had dictated replies to forty-five telegrams from his bed before his final collapse.

James had not yet turned fifty at the time of his death, gone so young that even his own father survived him. Ethel by contrast would live to be almost ninety. She continued to reside in DeQueen during her early widowhood. The 1930 census shows her still in Bear Creek Township, sharing a household with her twenty-five-year-old unmarried daughter Hazel. At that juncture, younger daughter Nadine had recently departed for the Minneapolis, MN area, where she would live out her life. Ethel is described in the census as a life insurance agent, and Hazel as a piano teacher. How long she remained in Arkansas is not entirely clear, but at some point in the middle of the 20th Century she observed the pattern of her sisters Lulu and Ada and Lulu’s children by moving to Texas. She may have moved in order to follow Hazel, who in 1945 wed Rathbone Alden Rodgers and began farming in Medina County, TX, or it could be that Hazel followed her. Mother and daughter lived in separate homes, however. Her sister Lena’s 1961 obituary describes Ethel as a resident of San Angelo, Tom Green County, TX -- this community was also home to Ada at that juncture. The Social Security Index lists Ethel’s final address as Dilley, Frio County, TX. It was only toward the very end of her life, in failing health, that she ended up near Hazel and Rathbone. Her obituary and her death certificate show that she spent her final days in Castroville, Medina County, TX. Due to a severe case of pneumonia she developed in late September, 1970, she was admitted to Castroville Hospital. She died there the following Sunday, the fourth of October, of complications of the infection.

Ethel’s remains were taken back to DeQueen and were interred in Redmen Cemetery in her family’s section, where the graves of her husband, parents, and other close kin can also be found.

Above and below are two views of the four Brown sisters. (There would have been five sisters if Minnie Edna Brown had lived past early childhood.) Above is a studio portrait taken in the mid-1890s. Lena is the teenager on the left, Lulu is in back, Ethel is on the right, and a very young Ada is in the center front. Below is the same quartet more than sixty years later at a family reunion in 1955. The scene is Martintown or a spot near there. Left to right, youngest to eldest: Ada Vonner Brown Luton, Lulu Fay Brown Seay, Ethel Irene Brown Cannon, and Mary Lena Brown Hastings.

Children of Ethel Irene Brown with James L. Cannon

Hazel LaReta Cannon

Vae Nadine Cannon

For genealogical details, click on the names.

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