Nathan Brown:

Springville´s Revolutionary War connection

The Honorable Horace Nathan Brown contracted with Krebs Bros. in 1886 to create a monument for his family´s plot at the Springville Cemetery.

Krebs Bros. advertised as a 'dealer in White Bronze Monuments” in the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette. White Bronze was the trade name given to 'pure Jersey zinc.” The marker cost more than $1,000 and included an historical sketch of the life of Horace´s father, Nathan Brown, a Revolutionary War veteran.

The inscription reads: 'Nathan Brown was born at White Plains, N.Y., July 22, 1761. At the age of 14 he began to drill in preparation to joining the American Army, and at 16 he entered the service in the Revolutionary War. His first battle was at Harlem Flats and his second one on the present site of Greenwood Cemetery. He was wounded but not seriously in some of the many battles in which he participated. Seven brothers served in the same army and his captain was an uncle. After the war he removed to South Hallow and afterwards to Buffalo, N.Y., where he remained a short time and then removed to Pennsylvania. April 1, 1838, removed to Geneva, Kane County, Ill. Afterwards settled one mile southwest of Springville, Ia. May 17, 1839. Died Nov. 25, 1842.”

The other sides include bas-relief busts of Horace and his wife, Julia, and a plaque with the names and dates of birth and death of Nathan and his wife, Tamar.

Nathan Brown enlisted to fight in the Revolutionary War under Capt. Benjamin Stevens in the New York Militia. He later served as part of the standing militia known as the Minute Men.

He returned to New York and married his first wife, Sarah Bailey, in South Salem Church in 1781. They had a son, John, who stayed behind when Nathan moved to Onondaga County, N.Y.

He married second wife Tamar Sammons there May 3, 1807. They had four daughters, Maria, Betsey, Amanda and Harriet. The family moved next to Fairview Township in Erie County, Pa. It was there that their son, Horace, was born in 1822 and Nathan´s pension finally was granted.

He continued his trek west in 1838, settling first in Kane County, Ill., where his married daughters, Maria and Betsey, remained before the rest of the family moved to Linn County.

The Brown family settled on an 80-acre plot of land a little more than a mile southwest of what now is Springville in 1839. Horace was 17. The township was named Brown Township after Nathan, who died three and a half years after moving to the Iowa territory. When he died, there were no lumber mills, which meant no lumber for a coffin. So a man known only as Patterson hewed a coffin out of log in which to bury the settler.

Nathan Brown was buried in Paralta Cemetery before Horace moved his father´s grave to Springville, probably when his mother, Tamar, died in 1868. The plot now holds Nathan, Tamar, Horace and Julia Brown.

When Horace died in 1893, he was living on the same plot of land that his family claimed in 1839. He had expanded that farm to more than 600 acres, raising cattle and hogs. He had served the county as its third treasurer and held several offices in the township, including justice of the peace. In an interview in 1891, he remembered when the county seat was established at Marion and that the first county business had been transacted at a town called Westport, better known as 'Pumpkin Bottom.”

Julia Brown managed the farm after Horace´s death and was buried in the plot in 1904.

The Cedar Rapids Ashley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a commemorative plaque at the site in 1931.

The monument was seriously damaged in 1977 by what was considered a 'mini-tornado.”

A structure blew across the road into the cemetery and broke the spire into several pieces. Three local men worked diligently to repair it. Don Waddell, Jim Barnes and Jake Hiner Jr. discovered that what everyone thought was a stone monument actually was constructed from a metal they thought was pewter. They poured a concrete base and bolted the metal together.

Since then, according to the Springville Area Historical Society, the marker has deteriorated considerably. Historical Society President Bev Franks contacted the Daughters of the American Revolution as the first step in trying to get organizations involved in raising money to preserve it.

At least 43 other Revolutionary War soldiers are buried in Iowa, including one in Linn County.

l Comments: (319) 398-8338; diane.langton@sourcemedia.net