Johnson County KS Archives Biographies.....Brown, George Washington 1856 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 9, 2008, 12:09 am

Author: Ed Blair

  George Washington Brown, a representative citizen of Lenexa, is a native of 
Iowa. He was born in Guthrie county, July 31, 1856, and is a. son of David W. 
and Martha A., (Harris) Brown, natives of Indiana, the former born in 1830 and 
the latter in 1839. David W. Brown came to Kansas in 1858, and settled in 
Shawnee township near Lenexa on the farm which George W., the subject of this 
sketch, now owns. David W. Brown was killed by border ruffians in 1860. He was 
a well educated man and a natural leader of men. He was a pronounced anti-
slavery man and entered into the contest to make Kansas a free State, with 
enthusiasm. At one election, by his activity at the polls, he prevented the 
casting of over 800 fraudulent pro-slavery votes. He had been warned by the 
pro-slavery men that they would kill him if he persisted in his activity in 
favor of a free State, but he was undaunted and went on as though nothing had 
happened. He was shot by a pro-slavery man by the name of Nowning in the old 
hotel at Shawnee, Kan. George W. was one of a family of four children as 
follows: George W., Elizabeth died at the age of thirteen; Martha married P. 
C. Woodward, of Kansas City, and Mary O., wife of O. W. Miller, of Mahaska, 
Kan. After the death of the father, the mother later married a Mr. Williams, 
and four children were born to this union: Jennie married Orion Messmere, and 
resides in Iowa; Ida May married Milton Swift, Lenexa; Effie, wife of E. A. 
Legler, and Maud, postmistress of Lenexa. George W. Brown was educated in the 
district schools and has been a student of men and affairs all his life. When 
he was twenty-one years old he worked a year on a farm and saved enough to buy 
a team, and then engaged in hauling hay and grain to Kansas City. He first 
purchased forty acres of land for $1,000, paying $100 down, and he later added 
to that and bought and sold land and accumulated considerable farm property 
besides a fine residence in Lenexa and other city property. He was engaged in 
sand contracting for a year and a half in Kansas City, and for a time lived on 
a farm near Ellsworth, Kan. He has been interested in raising thoroughbred 
Hereford cattle and has been very successful in that line of endeavor. He 
allotted a portion of his land known as Hill Crest addition to Lenexa. Mr. 
Brown was married January 11, 1883, to Miss Jessie McElwain, a native of Knox 
county, Illinois, born October 7, 1862. She is a daughter of James and Eliza 
Jane (Bechtle) McElwain, the former a native of Pennsylvania and the latter of 
Ohio. James McElwain was born in 1827, and died in 1901. He was of Scotch-
Irish and German descent. At an early day he left his Pennsylvania home and 
settled in Ohio, where he married Eliza Jane Bechtle. They later removed to 
Illinois, and in 1866 came to Kansas and settled east of Olathe. They were the 
parents of six children, as follows: Cecelia; Mary A.; Alice B., deceased; 
Jessie, Mrs. George W. Brown; Lillie H., Spokane, Wash., and James H., 
deceased. To George W. Brown and wife have been born: Rev. George Edward, born 
March 23, 1885, now a prominent minister in Brooklyn, N. Y. He is a graduate 
of the Olathe High School, Baker University, Boston Theological Seminary and 
took special courses of study at Columbia University, New York. Oliver 
William, born in August, 1887, was educated in the high school at Olathe and 
graduated from Baker University in 1910 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, 
and taught in the Edgerton High School. He died in June, 1913, at Liverpool, 
England, while on a vacation in Europe. James Lester, born August, 1890, is a 
graduate of the Olathe High School and Baker University, class of 1915, and 
Laverne, born June 10, 1895, graduated from the Olathe High School in 1915, 
with the highest honors, winning a Baker University scholarship, is now a 
student in that institution. Mr. Brown is a Republican and a member of the 
Methodist Episcopal church.

Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

HISTORY OF Johnson County Kansas
BY
ED BLAIR

AUTHOR OF
Kansas Zephyrs, Sunflower Sittings and Other Poems and Sketches

IN ONE VOLUME

ILLUSTRATED
STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
1915


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