"The Journal-Telephone", Milton Junction, Wisconsin, Thursday, Mar. 26, 1925, p 1. [A tribute delivered at his funeral service by Rev. Edwin Benjamin Shaw.] Four score and almost sixteen years ago, lacking only about four years of a full century, on a farm in Madison county, New York state, near the village of Brookfield, on Aug. 27, 1829, there came into this world of time a young life, a new distinct personality, to be known as Robert Williams Brown, who in the early morning hours of March 21, 1925, passed on from his earthly home here in Milton to the great unknown eternity. When the end comes to a life so long, and in an age like these wonderful years in which we live, somehow our thoughts travel back, and we marvel at the changes which have come upon our country here and upon the world, changes in our ways of living, changes in our ways of thinking, all in the life-time of one man. Mr. Brown's father was Williams Brown, Williams being an ancestral family name. His mother's maiden name was Esther Randall. His grandfather, Asa Brown, who served in the Revolutionary War, came to Brookfield about 1799, coming from the town of Stoning, Conn., driving as we may well imagine, all the way in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen. Asa Brown's grandfather was John, who with two brothers had settled in their young years in Stonington. They were the sons of Thomas Brown of Lynn, Mass., and he was the grandson of Edward and Jane Leids Brown of Inkborrow, Worcestershire, England. Robert Brown was married at Brookfield, N. Y., Sept. 5, 1853, to Miss Ann Lavantia Newton, daughter of Winslow and Maria Sackett Newton. From this marriage were born four children, Charles Newton Brown of Madison, Wis.; George Williams Brown of San Diego, Calif.; Nettie Maria Brown West, of Shanghai, China, widow of William Leman West.; and Hattie Esther Brown West, Mrs. Allen B. West, of Milton Junction. In 1864 Mr. Brown sold the old homestead at Brookfield where his grandfather Asa had settled, and with his young family moved to Utica, Dane county, Wis., accompanied by his father, several other members of his father's family having already made their homes in southern Wisconsin. The wife and mother died soon after they came to Utica, Feb. 18, 1867. Mr. Brown's second wife was a cousin of his first wife. They were married at her home in Hebron, Ill., Sept. 23, 1867. Her name was Mary Amelia Tower. From this marriage three children were born, Eleanor Brown, a teacher in Northrop Collegiate, Minneapolis, Minn.; Martha Diana Brown, who has kept her father's home and tenderly cared for him in his declining years; and Robert William Brown, who as a young naturalist while on a trip collecting specimens at Sweetwater Lakes, N. D., lost his life by drowning, May 9, 1895. The mother died here in Milton May, 1893. Mr. Brown was a farmer all his life long. Dearly he loved the soil, and well he understood how to till it so it would yield, some thirty fold, some sixty fold, and often an hundred fold. His farm at Utica was for those days a model place. He sold it to go to his father-in-law's farm at Hebron, Ill., in 1879. During parts of the three following years 1880-1882, I myself was a hired man on the farm that he so recently left, and the evidences were many and on every hand of his skill and neatness, and systematic methods. Fifteen years they lived at Utica. Thirteen years they lived at Hebron, and then in 1892 they came to Milton, thirty-three years ago. Members of the Brown family at Brookfield were Baptists; but when Robert was converted and made a public profession of religion in his young manhood, he accepted the Sabbath and became a member of the Second Brookfield Seventh Day Baptist church. When he came to Wisconsin he joined the Utica Seventh Day Baptist church in 1864, where his membership remained until 1898, when he united with the Milton Seventh Day Baptist church, in the fellowship of which he has lived for twenty-seven years, a reverent worshiper, a regular attendant at its services, a faithful worker in the ranks, a loyal supporter of its activities as a Christian institution. Aside from his own children and their families, Mr. Brown had no living relatives, no nephews or nieces. There are ten grandchildren, or were before the death of Carroll West, including one adopted child, and there are five great-grandchildren. In the Brown Genealogy, published in 1907, I find recorded the names of 55 persons who were own cousins of Robert Brown on his father's side alone, and I understand that there were as many more on his mother's side of the family. He himself was the seventh of eight children. Adding these eight to the 55 would make 63 people, of which number Robert, the last living one has now passed away. I consider it a privilege, sad to be sure, but a privilege none the less, to have this opportunity of bringing a personal tribute to the memory of this highly respected and much loved friend and neighbor. My first term at district school was at Utica, and George Brown was one of the big boys and sat on the back seat. There were other big boys at that school; some of whom have passed on, and one of whom is a bearer at this service today. That was in 1870, 55 years ago this winter that I first came into contact with the Brown family. I came to know the family very well in those days, and later when the grandchildren came to Milton College a new tie was formed. And than when Mr. Brown came to Milton in 1892, and a year or so later built this house here on the hill, we lived just across the road diagonally, and for years we were neighbors, and now for nearly two years we have been next-door neighbors, back-door neighbors. I shall miss him in the garden, feeble though he became, it was his joy and comfort to get out about the yard, to dig in the dirt and supervise the boys who did his work. When we had our gardens ploughed late last fall, he was not quite content and satisfied until I had helped him hobble out so he could show me just how he wanted the work done when the man should come with team and plow. I shall miss him in the church as I have missed him these weeks when he has been too feeble to attend; but the sense of loss will be different now that I know he can be in his pew no more forever. I shall miss him in his home, there will be a loneliness, a sense of vacancy, of emptiness in that direction, toward his home from ours. And so, good bye, my aged friend, who through all the rapid changes of these almost one hundred years, has kept apace, abreast, with the progress of the times, has favored action for social welfare, for education, for the betterment and happiness of human life, whose faith in God and in man has shone undimmed through all these years. Good bye, my aged friend, good bye. Nay, rather, in the spirit let me say, Good morning, neighbor Brown, good morning. "The Sabbath Recorder", Vol 23, No 10, p 39, Mar 7, 1867. In Christiana, Dane Co., Wis., Feb. 18th, 1867, of pulmonary disease, Mrs. Ann L. Brown, wife of Robert W. Brown, Esq., late of Brookfield, N. Y., aged 34 years. Sister Brown made a profession of religion in March, 1853, and united with the 2d Seventh-day Baptist church of Brookfield, N. Y. In the spring of 1864, she with her family came west, and settled in Christiana [now Utica], and early united with the Seventh-day Baptist church in that place, of which she remained a worthy member until released by death. During her relation with the Church of about fourteen years, she walked with God, proving that her religion was a power of the heart, that exerted a controlling influence over her life. She possessed in rare degree those natural traits of character which, together with the graces of the Spirit, so highly adorn woman. And although she suffered some five years under the wasting influ- [remainder of obit lost when printing] They Came to Milton http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=jonsaunders