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Earl Y. Brown was born in
Alabama in 1828, moving farther and
farther west to Van Zandt, Erath, and
finally, Coleman County, settling farther
up Home Creek from the Coggins, with his
cattle. The Mayberry holdings, or at
least cabins, were not far away.
Earl Y. came to Home Creek between 1855
and 1865. Susan Mayberry and Earl Y.
were married October 1, 1866. The
Mayberrys had come to the county after a
daughter was killed by Indians in Parker
County in 1862. She had been married
to Lem Barton, who came with the
Mayberrys.
Brown was the
ideal frontier type, a skilled horseman,
good shot, and ready and eager to go
wherever danger called. Susan, too,
loved the pioneer land. Late in
1867, a baby boy was born to the Browns,
and Susan did not recover from the birth,
living only a few months. The care
of the baby was taken over by Old Hen, a
former slave of the Mayberrys; and the
Browns, Mayberrys, and Bartons stayed on
Home Creek for several years. In
1876, three weddings performed by David
McAlester, Justice of the Peace at
Trickham, were of interest; Daniel
Mayberry married Lizzie Washington; John
married Margret Harris; and Mary Sevina
married William P. Barton. The place
of Susan's burial is somewhere on Home
Creek, the site now forgotten (see
M.O. Barton). Earl Y. moved
his cattle to Hood County and opened a
store at Acton, when the baby was
bigger. Henry, his nephew, who had
been his partner, took his family to the
Santa Anna Gap and built a one-room house
with a lean-to, in which he kept a store,
though he later bought a farm a few miles
to the east. His father, Owen Brown
(see Bell-Brown), who was brother
to Earl Y. and had been sheriff of Johnson
County, and representative in the state
legislature, came with his numerous family
in 1885, adding to the number of tall,
slender young Browns who enlivened the
Santa Anna community with a baseball team,
and at picnics and parties.
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