The Mystery Years - Brown Years (1885-1895)

This is the third chapter of "Ella and Agnes: The Story of a Family." 

The second chapter was THE REGERS OF RENVILLE COUNTY (BEFORE 1885).

The years 1885 to 1895 contain the deepest mysteries and inconsistencies in this family story. There is very little from this period that we know for certain. We do know that Ella was listed as 20-year-old "Ellen" Reger living with her parents in Renville County in the 1885 Minnesota state census:

Image from "Minnesota State Census, 1885," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MQXR-877 : 20 February 2021)

Ella then disappeared from the official record for ten years! In part, this is because the 1890 United States Census records were destroyed in a fire in 1921[1], but there seems to be more to it than that. When Ella reappeared in the 1895 Minnesota State Census in Bird Island, Renville County[2], she is listed as Ella Brown and she had a 7-year-old daughter, Agnes Brown. 

If this is accurate, Ella must have married a Mr. Brown sometime after 1885 and their daughter Agnes was born around 1887 or 1888.

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of speculation over every detail in the previous sentence, except that Ella is her mother! A lot of the documentation we need is missing or conflicting, so we are forced to consider several different possibilities and weigh the evidence for each. That is what we will try to lay out below:

When was Agnes born and why is there so much uncertainty about it?

Agnes is listed as 7 years old, indicating that she was born in about 1888. Our handwritten family tree (in the previous chapter), however, states that she was born in 1884. Unfortunately, we do not have birth or baptismal documentation to confirm either date. Over the course of Agnes’ life, her age and/or birthdate were listed on a number of documents, but they are very inconsistent:

Given this record, all that we can say with certainty is that she was born between March 1884 and March 1888. The evidence does strongly lean toward the later date, however. Our reasoning for this is as follows:

• Ella is listed in the 1885 census with her parents and Agnes is not listed; this is strong evidence that Agnes was not born yet.
• All of the earlier censuses point to 1888 or 1887 for Agnes’ birth year. The informant for these dates would probably have been Ella, who seems to have been a reliable source.
• The first document that indicates a birth year before 1887 was Agnes’ North Dakota registration of marriage to Martin Herrington in 1907. Given that they were already married in 1904 in Minnesota[3], it is unclear why Martin and Agnes applied for this document. We do notice, however, that they listed her age as 21 and that settlers had to be 21 years of age to apply for a homestead[4].
• In 1910 Agnes’ age is listed as 26 when she first entered Canada with her children. This is the first indication of an 1884 birth year. At the time, she may have wanted to present herself as older. Later on, she may have used this record in applying for other Canadian documents (such as citizenship and Old Age Security, etc.)
• The 1884 date on her death record was supplied by her husband, Nels Gilborn[5]. This record lists her father as Louis Sanders (her step-father) and her mother’s last name as “unknown.” Clearly, Nels had incomplete or inaccurate information.
• The only document to give Agnes’ full birth date other than her death record was a border manifest from Sweet Grass, Montana on March 22, 1937 (below). It is filled in by hand, possibly by Agnes herself, and it gives her birthdate as “3-28-88”. Puzzlingly, this manifest lists her age as 49, and since March 22 falls before her birthday, this would imply that she was born in 1887. Sometimes we wonder if Agnes had confused herself!

Border Manifest 3-22-37 at Sweet Grass, Montana ("U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1956" Ancestry.com)

• This leaves us with the most likely conclusion that Agnes was born on March 28 of either 1887 or 1888 and that the information on her death record, obituary, and headstone is incorrect.

Was Agnes born in Washington, and why do we have no records of this?

Almost all of the documents which list a birthplace for Agnes say that it was Washington State. In fact, her 1911 Registration of Marriage, 1932 and 1937 Border Crossings, and her Registration of Death all list the location specifically as Seattle, Washington. The only documents that contradict this are the 1900 US Census which states that she was born in Minnesota, and the 1910 United States Census which says that she was born in Pennsylvania. All other documents point to Washington State. Unfortunately, most Washington counties only began keeping birth records in 1891[6]. We searched online at the Washington Vital Records site, FamilySearch Database, and Ancestry Database, and in person at the Public Library in Seattle - all to no avail. If Agnes’ baptism records in Washington State do exist, we haven’t found them yet either.

Who was the elusive Mr. Brown?

The most difficult question, and the one for which we have the least data, is the identity of Agnes’ father. We can approach the issue from two different angles:

1. Clues regarding a marriage or relationship between Ella and a Mr. Brown
2. Other documentation indicating the name of Agnes’ father.

We will review the evidence for both of these issues below:

    1. A First Marriage for Ella?

• Our hand drawn family tree (previous chapter) does not give a date for a marriage between Ella Reger and Mr. Brown, but it does say that he died in 1884, so the marriage would have to have been before that. If that were true, however, Ella should have already been Ella Brown when she is listed as Ellen Reger in the 1885 Minnesota State Census. It is possible that the name on the census is wrong - that kind of mistake sometimes happened. However, even if that were the case, that Mr. Brown could not have been Agnes’ father because she was not born until 1887 or 1888 (see above). Most likely, then, Luella and Loretta simply estimated the year of his death from the family story that he died around the time of Agnes’ birth, and they believed her to have been born in 1884. It is therefore much more probable that the marriage occurred between 1885 and 1888.
• Despite years of looking, we have been unable to find a marriage registration for an Ella Reger to a Mr. Brown. This was unexpected, because we are able to easily find the marriage registration dates for many of Ella’s siblings on the Minnesota Official Marriage System (MOMS) website[7]. We wondered at first if this was because Ella never actually married Mr. Brown. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. By the 1895 Minnesota State Census, Ella was listed as Ella Brown, and this is also the name given on her marriage registration in 1900 to Louis Sanders. Finally, in the 1910 US Census, Ella E Sanders is listed as being in her second marriage (“M2”)[8]. Unless she lied about all of this, Ella had indeed been previously married to a Mr. Brown.
• The most likely explanation for the lack of a marriage registration in moms.mn.gov is that Ella’s first marriage occurred outside Minnesota. Since Agnes was probably born in Washington State, it seems reasonable to assume that Ella married Agnes’ father there. However, there do not seem to be any marriage records for Ella Reger in Washington either. The closest we could find was a reference in a 1890 Seattle city directory to Helen Brown, widow of Louis:

 close up from p. 177 of Seattle City Directory, by Polk's Seattle Directory Company, 1890 in the Hathi Trust Digital Library

• Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this “Helen Brown”  is our Ella, mother of Agnes. We continue to hope that we will one day discover some document (perhaps a church record?) that settles the matter, but for now all we can say with confidence is that it is likely that Ella married a Mr. Brown outside of Minnesota sometime between 1885 and 1888

    2. Evidence Regarding Agnes’ Father

• There are a few documents where Agnes listed the name of her father. On the 1904 parish record of Agnes’ marriage to Martin Herrington, the priest (Fr. J.H. Engels) recorded her father as “Louisii Brown” of “Anderlean, S Dacota.” 

close-up of cell phone photo obtained from parish secretary 

• This document is entirely in Latin, so “Louisii” was probably “Louis.”  There is no record of a community named Anderlean, South Dakota, however.  This does raise questions about whether the information supplied to Fr. Engels was completely accurate and/or whether he accurately recorded the information he was given.
• In her 1911 marriage to Harry Campion, Agnes also listed her father as Louis Brown (although the handwriting is difficult to decipher - it could be Brown or Braun).

close up of marriage registration document obtained from the parish in Medicine Hat (full image in later chapter)

• Should we assume, then, that Agnes’ father was in fact named Louis Brown? While this remains the most likely explanation, there are reasons to stay open to other possibilities. As we showed above with respect to her age and birth year, Agnes was not always reliable in providing details about her own life. We have found other incidents where she gave inaccurate biographical information on official documents[9], including one where she lists her father as “Louis Campion.” If Agnes was uncertain about the identity of her father or if she had some reason to feel shame about it, she may have felt compelled to make something up. Her stepfather’s given name was Louis, so she may have just used that name. In the absence of contrary evidence, however, our working assumption is that Agnes’ father was indeed named Louis Brown.

• Accepting the name “Louis Brown” opens up some other possibilities. First of all, it allows us to more seriously consider the reference to Helen Brown, widow of Louis Brown, in the 1890 Seattle directory (above). Secondly, it allows us to look for other documents where a Louis Brown was mentioned and see if they might fit. For example, we found a registration of a birth on March 27, 1888 in Blue Earth County, Minnesota of a female whose parents were Louis Brown (26 yrs) born in Ohio and Ellen (24 yrs) born in Pennsylvania[10]. This record does not list the baby’s name, the birth date is one day too early, and this birth conflicts with the theory that Agnes was born in Seattle, so there is reason to be skeptical of it. But it might be them. There are other birth and death records which mention other Louis Browns, and this name appears in a number of newspapers of the day. We could not find any, however, that mentioned a wife named Ella, a daughter Agnes, or a death in a railway accident. 

• The problem with all of these other sources is that there is nothing to link the three main players - Ella, Louis, and Agnes. The names are just too common and there is no way to prove that they are the right ones. To do that, we really need church or government documents that link them more clearly to our Ella and Agnes.

In summary, our best guesses about the lives of Ella and Agnes between the years of 1885 and 1895 are: 

• Ella Reger married Louis Brown between 1885 and 1887. 
• The marriage occurred outside Minnesota - possibly in Washington State. 
• Agnes was born on March 28 of either 1887 or 1888 in Seattle, Washington. 
• Louis died sometime shortly thereafter, possibly in a railroad accident. 
• Ella may have worked in the early 1890s in Seattle, possibly as an ironer at the Empire Steam Laundry, but 
• by 1895 she and Agnes were back in Minnesota.

Once Ella reappears in the 1895 Minnesota State Census as Ella Brown with a daughter Agnes Brown, the events of their lives become a lot clearer. There is much more documentation. Those documents, however, paint a fascinating picture of homestead life.

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Before we move on, there are two little “detours” in our research worth mentioning:

Who was Daniel Foley and how does he fit in?
On the 1895 census, Ella and Agnes are in the household of Daniel Foley and his 3 young sons[11]. We spent many hours researching the Foleys in an effort to investigate that relationship. We learned that Daniel had been widowed in 1894. His first wife was also named Ella[12]. Ella Brown was probably just a housekeeper and caregiver to Daniel’s children, but they may have had more of a relationship than that. In any case, soon after this census, Daniel married a different widow named Lillie. Daniel died in 1899, leaving Lillie with his children[13]. We don't know if either Ella or Agnes stayed in contact with the Foley boys, but we do know that Jeremiah (Judd) Foley ended up moving to Milk River, Alberta and was still living there when Agnes moved to Milk River in the 1930s[14].

Who were the other Louis and Ella Brown?

As unbelievable as it sounds, there was actually another Louis and Ellen Brown who were about the same ages as ours, living in Renville County, Minnesota at the time that our Ella would have married her Louis Brown. At first, we assumed that this had to be our Louis and Ella, but further investigation revealed that this Ellen Brown was originally Ellen Marie Carruth[15]. She and her Louis married on Oct. 13, 1886, in Renville County[16]. According to their FamilySearch profiles, their daughter Mabel was born in 1888 (about the same year as Agnes), and they appear on censuses together well after our Ella had moved away and married Louis Sanders.

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Next chapter: The Hubbard County - Sanders Years (1895-1904)

Notes:

[1] The Fate of the 1890 Population Census is a story of great significance to genealogists and historians. Many records were damaged or destroyed by the fire of January 10, 1921, in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, DC, and by the water used to put out the fire. Most of the documents that remained were ordered destroyed in the 1930s.

[2] The 1895 Minnesota State Census records can also be found at FamilySearch.org.

[3] Agnes and Martin's 1904 certificate of marriage obtained by Lorry and Dan Vanden Dungen from the Minnesota Official Marriage System (moms.mn.gov/).

[4] The Homestead Act of 1862 laid out the rules for homestead claims, including the rule that the applicant had to be 21 years of age.

[5] Agnes' death record is in family possession.

[6] In 1888, Washington was not yet a state. The region was part of Oregon Territory from 1848 to 1853, after which it was separated from Oregon and established as Washington Territory. Washington became the 42nd state in the United States on November 11, 1889. Washington counties were not required by law to keep vital records until 1891, although some did keep partial records before that. This has made our efforts to document Ella’s marriage and Agnes’ birth more difficult.

[7] Marriages of Ella Reger’s siblings on the MOMS website: 

• JC Rieger (Joseph Reger) & Kate L Duffy 10/9/1885
• Bertha Rieger (Reger) & William Duffey 10/19/1885
• Johanna Reger & George L Perusse 10/26/1892
• Reinhart Reger & Anna Kavanaugh 05/171893
• Josephine Reger & DS Coles 11/23/1893
• Annie A Reger & Joseph Cavanaugh 06/19/1897

* Anna and Joseph Kavanaugh were siblings, as were the Duffeys. 

   * Missing from this list (besides Ella) are: 

• Katharine Reger - unknown if she married
• Mary Reger & William Welch - no documentation; married approx 1893
• Agnes Reger &? London - married and divorced sometime between 1900-1920
• Philemina Reger - died 1870, age 1 yr
• Emma Reger - died 1880, age 2 yrs
• Charles Reger - died 1882 age 2 yrs

[8] The 1910 United States Census records can be found at FamilySearch.org

[9]  Some other documents containing inaccurate biographical information about Agnes (other than her age or birth year):

• Agnes signed her 1923 registration of marriage to Nels Gilborn as “Agnes Brown” although she was legally “Agnes Campion” at the time.  She claimed on this form that ”Brown” was her married name and “Campion” was her maiden name.  She listed  her father as “Louis Campion.”
• On the back of her border crossing manifest dated March 22, 1937, Agnes states that she married Nels Gilborn on January 31, 1913.  In 1913 she had actually been married to Harry Campion. 
• Both of these documents involve lying about her marriage to and divorce from Harry Campion. There would have been many reasons to do this: desire to forget about a painful time in her life; potential impediments or complications to a church wedding; trying to avoid explaining why the children of her marriage to Harry went by Gilborn rather than Campion.

[10] The record for the baby Brown on March 27, 1888 in Blue Earth County, Minnesota is found in the Register of Births in the County of Blue Earth in the State of MN, pg 54, line 36 (Image 1976) online in FamilySearch. FamilySearch has another birth registered on March 31, 1888, in St. Paul, Ramsey, MN of a female whose mother’s name was Ella Brown and whose father was not registered.

[11] In the 1895 Minnesota State Census in FamilySearch, Daniel’s sons are listed as John (age 8), Jess (6), and Clarence (4).  We believe that “Jess” was probably Jeremiah Foley. We know from other sources that there was a fourth son, Francis and indeed, we find a “Frank Foley” (age 2) living with his grandparents, Jeremiah and Mary Keefe, in Birch Cooley on the same census. Also listed in this household were Jerry Foley (age 5) and Clarence Foley (age 4).  Probably the boys spent much time at their  grandparents’ home and were accidentally counted in both locations.

[12] The following information was gleaned from Ancestry.com family trees: Ella O’Keefe or “Ellie Keefe” died in childbirth on October 24, 1894.  She is buried in St. Patrick’s cemetery in Birch Cooley Township, Renville County, Minnesota.

[13] Lillie E Folley is the head of the household in the 1900 United States Census along with her daughter Carrie (age 12), and stepsons John (13), Clarence (9), and Francis K (7).  Jeremiah is missing; probably he was with a Keefe relative. One Ancestry family tree states that their uncle Timothy Keefe became guardian of the Foley boys.

[14] See the obituary for Judd Foley in the Calgary Herald, March 11, 1969, page 3.

[15]  The FamilySearch profile for Ellen Marie Carruth (31 March 1867 – 28 April 1951) can be found at FamilySearch ID # 9C92-2JD

[16] The marriage of Louis Brown and Ella Carruth in 1886 in Renville County can be found at the MOMS website

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