This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Brower, Hollister Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/kFB.2ACE/4810.1 Message Board Post: I have a partial trace on Cecilia Brower Hollister, and it is extremely convoluted. Here goes: She is the daughter of Nicholas B. Brower and Sallie Hurlbut, both of New York City and the sister of a Missouri County Judge. Biography of Judge Robert Brower (Ref: History of St. Charles, Montgomery & Warren Counties, Missouri (1885)) Judge Robert Brower - Farmer and Judge of the County Court Judge Brower is a worthy representative of an old and honored Knickerbocker family of New York. The founder of the family in this country settle on Manhattan island from Holland, when the Empire State was a Dutch colony. Judge Brower's father, Nicholas B. Brower, was a prominent merchant of New York for over 50 years. He was married twice, first to Miss Ruth Prince, by whom there is but one child living, a son, Edgar; to his second wife he was married in 1816. She was a Miss Sallie Hurlbut. There were six children by this union, five sons and a daughter, all of whom are living, namely Hurlbut, a leading farmer of Woodbury county IA; Cecelia, the wife of George M. Hollister, of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Nicholas B., Jr., an attorney and editor at Hannibal, Oswego Co. NY; Jacob, who was a gallant soldier in the Union army during the late war (Civil War), having been severly wounded, and is now a resident of Montgomery county, Mo.; Judge Robert Brower, the subject of his sketch; ! and Putnam, now of Bridgeport, Conn. Judge Robert Brower was born in New York City, in 1825, and was about 10 years of age when his father died. I see no indication that she went to Missouri, but she is clearly from New York City and she is apparently a descendant of Adam (often misidentified as "Berkhoven") Brouwer, one of the earliest settlers of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City). She is in no way connected with the large Dutch immigration directly to western Michigan.