Pilgrimages —
     to New England sites of interest or relevance to the Brown family history.

March 2008 —

Spring break. The kids were out of school, so we took a trip to the east coast to visit family, friends, and places of familial interest.

Rowley Burial Ground

The earliest American arrivals in the Brown clan began with Charles Browne (the captain's great-great-great-great grandfather) who settled at Rowley, Massachusetts in 1639.

Charles was, among other things, a school teacher and the town drummer. He married Mary d'Acey in 1647. Charles and Mary had serveral children. It was their son, Nathaniel, who sold the family homestead in 1690 and relocated to Connecticut.

While we’re fairly certain that Charles and Mary were laid to rest in the old Rowley burial ground, the markers are now gone or illegible, and their exact resting places are unknown.

Mystic Seaport

Captain Brown’s daughter, Charlotte, married Nelson Cole Haley. Also a whaleman, Haley sailed as a boatsteerer on the Charles W. Morgan from 1849 to 1853. His account of that voyage, published in 1948 under the title Whale Hunt, remains in print to this day. Haley’s original manuscript may be viewed in by appointment in the Blundt Library at Mystic Seaport or on the seaport’s web site.

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Peckham Church Cemetery
Iron Road
Ledyard, CT 

Click here for more burials in this cemetery

In the old Peckham Church cemetery on Iron Road in Ledyard, CT, we found markers for several members of the Brown and Wilcox families. (There were more than we have pictured here, but it was cold and rainy, so we didn’t stay long.)

Mary “Polly” Wilcox Brown
died Nov. 28, 1877,
aged 84 years.
(Robert’s mother)

Laura Brown Lanpheer
died May 5, 1842

(Robert’s sister died at age 23, a day after
her infant daughter. Mother and child were
buried together.)

Aaron Brown
born Nov. 25, 1781, died Nov. 3, 1870
(Robert’s father)

C. Jeffrey Brown
died Dec. 16, 1870, aged 42 years
(Robert’s brother)
*There is another “Jeffrey Brown” nearby
who died in 1872...probably a cousin.

Eleazer Brown
died Jan. 18, 1834, aged 22 years
(Robert’s brother)

 

Sawmill Park

Adjacent to the Peckham cemetery is Sawmill Park, which has a lovely pond and an old sawmill, which has long since been rebuilt, but stands on the same site where Nathaniel Brown (the second, our Robert’s grandfather) operated a sawmill & blacksmith’s shop between 1790 and 1805.

The current restored building operates as a museum on occasional spring and autumn weekends.