Abraham Brown was born in Virginia in 1778 and died on December 4, 1850?
Abraham Brown married Rebecca Harbin in 1804.
Abraham and Rebecca had the following children:
Matilda Brown
Julie Ann Brown b: 1 FEB 1805 in Elbert County, Georgia – March 1, 1802 in Georgia
John Brown b: 26 MAY 1808 in Georgia, USA
Middleton W. Brown b: 1811 in georgia, USA
Elizabeth E. Brown b: 12 FEB 1818
Sophia Brown b: 25 JUL 1820
Sarah A. Brown b: 1822 in georgia, USA
Abraham ( Abrom) G. Brown b: 1825 in Georgia, USA
Elzaphan J. Brown b: 1827
“Elzey” Confederate Soldier Died at Vicksburg, Missippie on April 11, 1863 at the City Hospital, Vicksburg, Warren County, Missippi. Buried in Vicksburg, Missippi
Marshall H. Brown March 17, 1831 – April 15, 1912
Middleton W Brown, listed above, was living in Campbell County, Georgia in what is today Fairburn in 1900. I have visited Middleton and families gravesites just outside of the downtown area of Fairburn, Georgia
Rebecca Harbin Brown was born in 1787 in Anderson, South Carolina. moved to Campbell County, Georgia. It has not been determined if her husband Abraham moved with her to Campbell County. Some records indicate that he died before 1850 and others indicate that he died in the late 1840’s so he might have been deceased before Rebecca moved to Campbell County.
This particular Abraham Brown has been the most difficult one to research. The problem is not that there are no records of an Abraham Brown in Elbert County, Georgia. The problem is determining which records belong to this Abraham Brown and separating him from the other Brown families living in the county at the same time.
Brown was already a common surname in the area, and there appear to have been several distinct Brown families in Elbert County during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The same given names—John, Robert, William, Abraham, and others—occur again and again. To make matters more confusing, later family trees have sometimes added names or relationships that cannot yet be supported by original records. Abraham is occasionally identified online as John Abraham Brown, while his son John is sometimes called John Washington Brown, John Abraham Brown, or John Brown Jr. So far, the contemporary records I have examined simply call the older man Abraham Brown and the younger man John Brown.
Another difficulty is that early records rarely state relationships as plainly as we would like. I have not found a birth record saying, “John Brown, son of Abraham Brown and Rebecca Harbin.” Instead, the case has to be reconstructed from a number of separate records.
Abraham Brown appears in Elbert County tax and land records. In an 1815 tax digest he is listed not only in his own name but also as guardian for a Robert Brown. In 1816 the State of Georgia granted Abraham 200 acres in Elbert County. That tract was bordered by land belonging to a Thomas Harbin and an older John Brown, placing Browns and Harbins in Abraham’s immediate neighborhood.
The 1820 census provides another important clue. Abraham Brown was living in the Whites area of Elbert County, near the Broad River. His household contained one male between the ages of ten and fifteen. John Brown, born in 1808, would have been twelve years old when that census was taken and fits that single census position exactly.
Rebecca Harbin Brown presents another part of the puzzle. A surviving 1856 document concerning the estate of William Harbin records a distribution to “Rebekka Brown” from what she calls “my father’s estate.” The receipt is made “by John Brown.” The document does not state that John was Rebecca’s son, but it places a John Brown in a position of trust acting on her behalf. If this was John Brown born in 1808, the record is an important piece of indirect evidence connecting him to the woman believed to have been his mother.
Family tradition also has to be considered, although I do not treat it as proof. Older members of the family, long before the days of online family trees, said that Abraham Brown, born about 1778, was our ancestor. My grandfather remembered that there had been several men named Abraham in the family and that they were commonly called Abram. He also spoke of growing up in the Broad River area. Later records confirm that this Brown family did, in fact, live in that part of Elbert County.
There are smaller clues as well. John Brown named a daughter Rebecca, and the name Middleton appears in both the proposed family of Abraham and Rebecca and among John’s children. None of these naming patterns proves a relationship, but they become more interesting when they agree with the census, land, probate, and family evidence.
For that reason, the search for Abraham Brown has become less a matter of finding one decisive document and more a matter of assembling a case from many pieces. Each record by itself may be inconclusive. Taken together, however, they begin to form a consistent picture of Abraham Brown and Rebecca Harbin as the probable parents of John Brown, born in Elbert County in 1808.
I still hope to find a record that states the relationship directly. Until then, I prefer to distinguish between what is proven, what is probable, and what remains family tradition. That caution has become especially important in researching a surname as common—and as complicated—as Brown.