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My Great Grandfather, John Campbell Brown was born in Vienna NY in 1852. He married Urvilla Fitch, whose father Oren fought in the Civil War, and whose great grandfather, Thomas Harrison, fought in the War of Independence and whose mother was descended from the family Houghton. His grandparents were Sanford and Ruth Brown, who lived in Oneida County and John and Urvilla knew each other as children.
But John is an enigma. From his seemingly ordinary upbringing, he gathered his family, including his mother Marietta Campbell (his father shows up in only one census and then disappears), and crossed to South Dakota where he eeked out an existence as a cattle farmer(and occasional "borrower" of cattle and things) was the town postman, ran afoul of the law often and had poems and stories written about him in local lore. He then moved to Great Falls and lived in the vacant brewery there. Travelling around the town in a horse drawn cart, with his dog Blue, he gathered up the discarded items of other people's lives and resold them, leaving his wife a tidy sum of $29,000 when he died in 1929. He was said to have studied for the clergy and/or the bar but then his brother, Mark, would show up with the law hot on his trail to hide in John's barn till they left. I have not been able to trace beyond Sanford and Ruth and would love to know what influences would create such a man, leaving a legacy of unique characters across the country.
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