Small Corrections to the Thomas N. Browning family!

I am currently out of pocket taking care of my mother, who's recovering from spinal surgery. I haven't had much time to spare to dedicate to genealogy (especially since I've no access to any of my databases and paperwork) but I did manage to find enough down time to locate a few obituaries via the Google News Archive Search.

If you've never used it, head on over there and try it out! There are a lot of newspapers and date ranges to pick from and I was lucky enough to find most issues of the weekly Robinson Constitution (Crawford Co., IL) available from 1877-1919. This newspaper has given me a number of obituaries and brief Browning mentions and I wanted to share a few of these. I've found I needed to do a few small corrections for the Thomas Newton Browning family I mentioned in my last post.

In the 27 December 1899 edition I found the obituary of Thomas Clifford Browning. I was reading through it and was surprised and chagrined to see that Cliff hadn't died where I always believed he had! The obituary stated he had "lung trouble" and had moved to San Antonio, TX to see if the climate would be of benefit to him. Obviously it didn't. His remains were shipped from San Antonio to the Crown Hill cemetery in Indianapolis for the burial on 24 December 1899. I got excited and boogied on over to FamilySearch's Texas Deaths 1890-1976 database hoping to find Cliff's death certificate but I wasn't able to locate it. Bleh!

In my original chronological post I'd mentioned that Cliff died in Indianapolis, IN. That was a guesstimate on my part and I willingly stand up and offer my back for the prerequisite 40 whacks! (In my defense, Cliff had been shown in an 1899 Indianapolis city directory and he'd been buried in Crown Hill in the city, so generally.....well, you know the rest.) Lesson definitely learned.

I also found his sister Leola (Browning) Paramore's obituary in the 17 October 1900 edition. She, too, died of lung trouble....consumption, or tuberculosis as it's called today. She died on 10 October 1900 in Indianapolis (this time the obituary and my records agree!) and was buried in the Crown Hill cemetery in Indianapolis on the 11th.

Add these two to the first of the Browning deaths out of infancy -- Iona Lee, in 1896. Iona's obituary states she died at age 19 after an extended illness...consumption.

I was glad to find these two obituaries but disturbed to notice the trend of deaths in Thomas and Sarah Ann (Huls) Browning's family. Of their seven children (Effy May, Ralph Hansen, Leola, Iona Lee, Thomas Clifford, Roscoe, and Alta Mearl) three of them died of lung troubles. Effy May and Roscoe died as infants. Only Ralph and Alta lived long enough to have children of their own and of those, only Ralph actually did.