Biographical Sketches

MINNIE MAE (DALE) BROWNS 1882-1966

By her granddaughter, Viginia Lee (Turner)(Wespthal) Long

Minnie (Dale) Browns moved to Buckner in 1918 when my grandfather bought the blacksmith shop. She lived there until a few months before her death in September of 1966. Before her marriage, Minnie had been a schoolteacher in the Oklahoma "territory". (Two of her brothers had participated in the land rush for homesteads when Oklahoma was opened for settlement). 

It was near Ponca City, OK, where she met my grandfather, who was learning the blacksmith/farrier trade in his father's livery stable. Her first 3 children were born before they moved from Oklahoma.

When I was a child, if I had been asked, I would have said that there was nothing very spectacular about my grandmother...however, I would have been very wrong and it is only in hindsight, with the advantage of age, that I can appreciate the wonderful qualities she possessed. As I remember her, she was medium height, heavy-set with grayish hair and a round face.

Grandmotherly...most often she wore a print apron over her dress, unless of course, she was going to town or to church. She was a faithful member of the Methodist Church which we always attended with her on Sundays when we were visiting. The church building is still standing on the main street, north of the business district a block or two; a large squarest stone structure with stained glass windows and a flight of stairs leading to the main doors.

Minnie was a strong woman, much more so than it appeared to a child...it is hard for us now, with all our "modern conveniences" to imagine what life, early in the 20's, was like for a woman. She raised 5 children, keeping house for them and her husband (whom she called "Amy" , short for Amos), seeing that 3 meals were on the table each day, cooking on a wood or kerosene stove, raising a huge garden with "Amy's" help, canning foods and making jelly's and jams for winter use, raising chickens for eggs and meat, doing the laundry for 3 adults and 5 children in the back yard using a washboard (until a "wash house" was built and furnished with electricity after WWII), pumping all the water for drinking and household use from a well, carrying and heating water for laundry in a large iron pot on a wood fire behind the house (until plumbing was installed inside the early 1950's), making soap from wood ashes and grease during the time that there was a soap shortage during the war years and literally "keeping the home fires burning." I was born at their house in 1935 and though I was never told so, she probably assisted the doctor too.

Grandma baked the most delicious cookies, cakes and pies. On Sunday visits, there was usually a "treat" in the pantry. The cookie jar was always kept in reach of small children and filled with sugar or oatmeal/raisin cookies or other goodies. Her piecrusts were always made with lard, and would simply fall to pieces if you picked them up. Recently, I tasted a cake somewhere which reminded me of the texture and flavor of her cakes...heavy, moist and sweet...mmmmmmm! I sure would like to have those recipes, but as far as I know, Grandma's were kept only in her head and I don't remember her "measuring" ingredients, it was "a pinch of this" or a "dollop of that".

There was a large fenced pen in the far back yard of my grandparents home on Hudson Street....there, Grandma raised here chickens. She would see eggs at the farmer's co-op at the far end of Main Street and she made delicious fried chicken or chicken and dumplings....all the "chicks" my sister, Elizabeth, and I received for Easter, eventually ended up in Grandma's chicken pen. (That way we never knew when we were eating our "presents"). During WWII, chicken feed came in printed cotton sacks, and Grandma would make sure to buy 2-3 matching feed sacks, launder them when they were empty and give them to my mother to make dresses for me. 

Today, I occasionally hear on RV about "vintage fabrics" with a mention of these feed sacks as material being used for making quilts. Grandmother probably saved the scraps from my dresses for this purpose, as quilt making was a favorite pass time on winter days. A favorite quilt patter of the 1930's which I saw made often, was the "double wedding ring". Both she and her mother-in-law worked on piecing the quilt tops by hand, and I recall seeing a quilt frame (for the actual "quilting" process) standing either in the dining room or living room most winters. There was usually a jigsaw puzzle on a table being worked on during the winters too. The "Word Jumble" in the newspaper was Grandma's property, and she rarely missed solving it completely...a feat I can't manage!

She tolerated the summer vacation visits of "the cousins" with exceptionally good humor....There were 3 of us who would descend on her each summer during the 1940's for a week or two. Aunt Bernice's 2 girls, Norma Sue and Orlean Mae (sis), and myself. (We were the oldest of the grandchildren). I remember having Grandma treat our chigger bites with kerosene from the kitchen stove after wer have been playing in the cornfield, chasing us out of the chicken pen when we liked to climb a tree that had low branches and ministering to me when I stepped barefoot on a thorn from a locust tree...later, there were visits from younger grandchildren, too, but ours was the first.

Grandmother had a few "pets" (asided from the dogs...which were Grandpa's)...always a cat or 2, mostly strays that wandered in, and gold fish...In the summer the fish were "housed" in a large sunken bathtub in the back yard and they grew huge! In winter they were brought into a much smaller tank in the living room. The large gold, orange and white spotted and black molly fish were fascinating to watch, but I bet they were glad when spring came, to be returned to their more spacious quarters in the back yard. In 1937, Grandma had a black male cat, which I loved. One Sunday, on our way home from visiting Buckner, we saw a litter of kittens that had been dumped beside the highway. My father stopped, and I, of course, begged to take a kitten home...the black one, "like grandma's". We did, and nothing would do but given the kitten the same name as Grandma's cat. The cat didn't seem to mind that "she" had been given a boy's name, and she out-lived grandma's cat many years!

I mentioned that Minnie was a "strong" woman...thiss perception has grown since I have been an adult and has alot to do with the fact that her mother-in-law, Mary Francis Browns, lived with them for 15 or more years before her death at age 90 in 1949. The household was not acrimonious, which showed great fortitude on both their parts. My great-grandmother worte in her diary that she preferred to live with Minnie and "Amy", to living with any one of her own daughters (she had 5) or other daughter-in-laws, because she felt more at home and appreciate there. What a great compliment to my grandmother!

Since I never failed to hear Grandma ask Grandpa what he preferred for dinner (her term for the noon meal) before he left for work each morning, I was sure after his death she would hardly be able to function...but again, I was wrong...she lived alone 3 years until she became too ill and frail. Minnie Mae (Dale) Browns was really a remarkable woman!

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This page was last updated August 2, 2006.