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Albert Pierce Brown was born May 11, 1849 in Genesee County, New York to John Adam Brown and his wife Mary Parks Brown, natives of Massachusetts according to Albert's assertion in the census. One census and some information from the Brown family indicate Mary Parks might have been born in Vermont. It appears that in 1850 Mary and Albert are living apart from John and the other children. Mary and Albert are in Genesee Byron Township NY and John A and five children are in Genesee Elba Township NY. By 1860 they are together living in Genesee Elba...
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Albert Pierce Brown was born May 11, 1849 in Genesee County, New York to John Adam Brown and his wife Mary Parks Brown, natives of Massachusetts according to Albert's assertion in the census. One census and some information from the Brown family indicate Mary Parks might have been born in Vermont. It appears that in 1850 Mary and Albert are living apart from John and the other children. Mary and Albert are in Genesee Byron Township NY and John A and five children are in Genesee Elba Township NY. By 1860 they are together living in Genesee Elba Township. Albert had siblings, James AJ, John, Eliza, Frank, Helen, Richard, and William. Both John A and Mary Brown always said they were born in New York.. Both were still alive in 1880 and living in Genesee County NY.
According to a story written for the Mound City, Missouri newspaper, he "left the comforts and luxuries of a well-to-do home," when he was twenty-one, which would have been 1870. He lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for three years and then set out for Yankton, Dakota Territory. The 1870 census finds him working in Council Bluffs as a clerk. He worked in Yankton as a surveyor's helper, acquiring goods for the store at Standing Rock. It was in Yankton that Albert first met General Custer as he and the 7th Cavalry came off a steamboat and made camp. A blizzard forced the cavalry to take shelter in local barns. General Custer was at the same hotel as Albert when he met him. Over the years he camped with Custer and his men several time on his trips to Yankton from Standing Rock. In 1872, he worked for a surveying company as a sun compass operator. According to what Albert told George Behrens for the Rapid City paper on August 26, 1927, he left Standing Rock when they heard rumors of gold!
Hannah Hobson was born in March 1857 on "the Atlantic Ocean,'" aboard the shop "Emerald Isle. The Captain of the ship named her. It is believed her mothers name was Alice but we have not found any trace of her of her or her mother and Aunt that are said to have come with them,. Hannah always specified the Atlantic Ocean when she was asked in the census. . The 1870 census shows a Hanna Hobson age 13 born at Sea living in Cedar County Nebraska, across the Missouri River from Yankton County SD, no family is with her. On Jan or February 5, 1873, Albert married Hannah Emerald Hobson, probably in Yankton, Dakota Territory , The Hopsons may have met a future wife of Brigham Young while they were still in England between 1839 and 1842 and were converted to the Morman faith. Hannahs father died probably in England, Hannah, her mother, her grandmother and a sister of her grandmother came to the United States probably between 1860 and 1870. They first went to Salt Lake City but were put off by the polygamy of the Church at left for Council Bluffs and later Yankton. No documentation has been found of them in Council Bluffs or Yankton. The Archivist in Salt Lake City assures me that there is very little doubt they would have known about Polygamy in the Church when they were converted in England, it was not a secret.
Albert bought a farm and began raising oats and potatoes near Yankton SD, when harvest was near a hoard of grasshoppers came and stripped everything even the leaves on the trees. Albert had no money having lost his crop, so he set out to be a surveyor in the Red River Valley (probably MN), Hannah went to stay with her mother. Alice Hobson ran a boarding house where Albert stayed when he came to Yankton to buy supplies for Standing Rock Store. First child Mary/ May was born in Yankton in May of 1874.
In 1875, Albert Brown went back? to Standing Rock Indian Reservation where he worked in the military post store. The Trading post was visited by many of the tribes of the Sioux Nation, even Sitting Bull came there and Albert knew him well. He also met General Custer and sometimes camped near the military on his trips from Ft Abraham Lincoln to Yankton for supplies for the store.
In January of 1876 Albert Brown and thirty others, led by California Joe Milner, who was a former scout for Custer. They left Bismarck Dakota Territory for the Black Hills, when they heard that the area was being opened for settlement. Apparently they were told it would be at their own risk to the vast unsettled region. They had also heard that there was gold in the Black Hills. So about thirty men they arrived in on Rapid Creek in January 1876, the location was later called Upper Rapid, or Cleghorn Springs. Albert later homesteaded Sec 9 1N 7 E, along with Callifornia Joe Milner.
. They thought they were founding Rapid City according to Albert's story to George Behrens in August 1927, which varies from other accounts of the founding of Rapid City.
Existing lists of those who founded Upper Rapid do not name Albert Brown as being present, though he is listed as being with Brennan and others on the present site of Rapid City. Albert stated that in the fall of 1876 he and others packed their bags and went to Deadwood and laid it out. He participated in laying out the town of Crook City (now Whitewood) in Lawrence County, South Dakota. Apparently he was trying to make quick money and get back home. He worked a claim near Crook City but "it didn't pan well." He was in the Hills when Preacher Smith was killed on August 20, 1876 near Deadwood.
Also so killed that year was Albert's best friend, whom he names as Henry Harrington was killed along with S.C. Dodge, and C. Nelson. They all were out cutting wood in the area just west of present-day Sioux San to build cabins in the new settlement of Upper Rapid. The man called Henry Herring, undoubtedly the same man as Harrington, was killed by Indians about May 13, 1876. Albert apparently dug his grave and buried him, just as he was, for he had no good suit! For many years there was a marker at the site along the road near Sioux Sanitarium .
Albert Brown had planned to go back to Yankton the winter of 1876 but his friend, a freighter Al Gray asked him to stay in Rapid City and feed his oxen. So he stayed, leaving his wife and daughters Hannah and May in Yankton all winter. Unfortunately, Indians killed some of the oxen so Albert drove the rest of them to Deadwood and sold them, turning the money over to their owner. He built the first flume to carry water from Cleghorn Springs to irrigate his farm where he raised hay, oats and market vegetables that he sold in Deadwood. Albert later recounted that when he came into Rapid City in June 1877, he saw men hanging on Hangman's Hill. After California Joe Milner was killed at Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska, Albert sold California Joe's land to George Wells. In the
Spring of 1878 he drove an ox team to Pierre to meet his wife and by this time two children.
In the 1880 census, the Albert Brown family is living in Rapid Valley, this is really where he homesteaded and not the present day Rapid Valley, Pennington County, Dakota Territory. Albert decided to go in to the beer business, and so harvested wild barley that was growing everywhere. He went to Council Bluffs IA to get supplies and hired a man who was supposed to be a brewmaster. Unfortunately, after they got the beer started the man drank all the time, so Albert couldn't keep enough beer to supply the local saloons. He went broke on the deal and started to look for a place to move his growing family to. In December 20, 1883, Albert Brown homesteaded 160 acres in Pennington County Rapid Valley March 30, 1883 Lyman Parkhurst sold Albert Brown his brewery. Land records indicate the date of the sale of the Brewery back to Parkhurst happened May 23, 1883. Albert also owned Sec 34 of 1 N 7 E, where the brewery was.
November 18, 1883, Albert Brown moved his family to a site on the Little Missouri River five miles from Camp Crook, Dakota Territory. The family story is that he came up and "took a claim" near Camp Crook. This property was located not far from where Tie Creek runs into the Little Missouri, the Sky Ranch for Boys occupies part of the Brown Homestead. He hired some people to stay there and build the fences and put up hay while he went to Iowa to buy stock for the ranch. People from some of the big ranches around convinced the people on Albert's claim that the Indians were going to attack and they left for the Black Hills. When Albert returned with 161 head of cattle it was late in the fall and there was no time to build fences and there was no hay. Albert attempted to winter the cattle anyway but most died. Those that survived had strayed as far as Belle Fourche and a few were found in the spring by the Hashknife Cowboys. Albert went to work for that "outfit" as a cook. His family lived in a "dugout' the first winter in Camp Crook. The lived in the "dugout " for a long time and it became a much bigger house. It was right on the Little Missouri River and to this day you can see the remains of the place that Albert and family lived from 1883 to 1900. It was sold in 1883 to? Volin .It may well be that Albert Brown left his family on the Ranch near Camp Crook for long periods of time. Clyde Brown, a grand son of Albert was fond of saying that Albert was known to come home to conceive another child and then leave. The longest periods between children are 1879 to 1884. Albert, in 1934 an interview with a newspaper in Mound City, Missouri said that in is his younger days "he was possessed of a desire to travel." He made five round trips to California and one trip to the Yukon gold fields of Alaska. One of his trips to California in 1883 was on horseback, leading a packhorse to carry his camping equipment and provisions. On this trip he went via Yellowstone National Park, which was then just being opened to sight seers. On horseback he rode south to Los Angeles thence to Oregon where he sold his horse, after having traveled in this manner a distance of 1,500 miles. If even some of story is true, Albert was a very busy man, for in 1883 he also filed for a homestead and moved his family to Camp Crook., Several people including Albert's son-inlaw, Willard Padden doubted some of Albert's wilder stories.
In 1884 Albert hired Henry Gallup and they put in a crop of corn and oats, built out buildings and fences. He raised and sold Grain to his old employer the Hash Knife outfit for several years.
In 1886, Albert Brown began salvaging ties from along Tie Creek that were left by men who cut them for the Northern Pacific Railroad between Bismarck and Billings. They had been cut in the Short Pine Hills during 1880 to 1881 and had taken to Tie Creek to float them down the Little Missouri River. But after a spring flood, the level of that river went down so fast that the ties were left behind and they were worth $40,000. An alternate story that has much to recommend it is, that the Company cutting the ties, built a dam on Tie Creek and when they were ready to float them, they blew up the dam with dynamite. Some of the ties did reach the Missouri River to build the Railroad.
The winter of 1886–1887 was a bad one and Albert Brown lost most of his cattle that he had rented to a neighbor. So he packed up his wife and four children in two wagons and set off for Winchester, Tennessee, a journey that took three months and one day. According to his daughter May Padden, " We stopped and camped one day out of each week to wash clothes and bake bread." Albert's son Harry recalled that baby Albert Jr died a few days after they arrived in TN. Albert stayed until spring and then learned that the people renting the farm in South Dakota had abandoned it. Albert came back to Camp Crook first, leaving Hannah alone with their seven children. They lived in Tennessee through the winter and summer, when Albert sent $10 and told Hannah to sell the household goods and come back home. They took the train as far as Whitewood South Dakota and Albert met them with a team and wagon. Hannah was said by her son Harry to have been very glad to get home. If the seasons are recounted correctly it looks like Hannah and the children were in Tennessee the best part of three years. If they left for Tennessee in the Spring of 1887,let's say May, Albert was born in April maybe, and died in August, just after they arrived. Walter was born August 23, 1889, they stayed the winter of 1889 and 1890 and came back to South Dakota in maybe May of 1890. Hannah was never really well after that, she contracted asthma according to her son Harry.
In about 1890 the son of a neighbor from Winchester TN showed up at the Camp Crook ranch, his name was Frank Durham, he was 21 and had just left home. Albert hired him at $10 a month to work on the ranch, he stayed for five years. He and Albert built a granary, good barns and enlarged the dugout, making a "early day split-level house". Frank is found in the 1900, and 1910 census in Montana, he apparently liked Montana and made his life there.
In 1895, Albert Brown homesteaded in Township 18 North, Range 2 East, the West half of the West quarter of Section 21, in what would in 1909 become Harding County. Around 1889 two men asked Albert Brown if he would go into the cattle or maybe the horse business, both were mentioned by the family, with them. As security they gave him mortgages on property that they owned in Mound City, Missouri. In 1900 unable to collect on the mortgages when they were past due, Albert went to Mound City to take over the real estate. Harry says Albert came back and talked Hannah into moving to Mound City. In the 1900 census Hannah, Harry, William, Walter, Sybilla and Minnie are in Butte, Harding County, and Albert is already in Holt County, Missouri. In the 1910, the family was living in Holt County, and in 1920, Albert and Hannah are living alone in Mound City.
Hannah died January 3, 1928, while on a visit to May Padden at Camp Crook in South Dakota. In the 1930 census, Albert is living alone in Mound City. He died March 1, 1937 in Fairfax, Missouri at the home of his daughter, Minnie Means. He was brought back to be buried with Hannah in Camp Crook Cemetery.
The Padden Ranch is in Carter County Mt but the road to Ekalaka, the County seat of Carter County is not an all weather road and it is 47 miles long.. Which accounts perhaps for not being able to find some events in the life of the Padden family in the State they happened in.
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