"Where in the world are you taking us?" Stout-hearted Mrs. Brinton Paine Brown was in tears.   Ten year old Enoch set to drive them over the 100 rod wide Catfish marsh (near Corinth).   The frightened horses threatened to bolt as each log section of the "floating road" submerged at the touch of hooves! "Why mother," cheered her preaching Methodist husband, coming up with his ox-drawn load, "we’re crossing Jordan. Canaan is just ahead, full of milk and honey.   There may be Anaks and Amelikites, but we’ll drive them out."

That was in 1841 when the Browns came to Brownsville, says A. S. Paragus in the St. Thomas Times-Journal.   And various other pioneers at around the same time.   Little did they dream that Anaks and Amelikites, risen up over the earth, would prevent their descendents celebrating the centenary (1941-42) of the founding of the settlement.   For Brownsville had planned a memorial fete to revive local history – an old boys, perhaps, with Prof. Landon to unveil a cairn in honor of the pioneers.   But with so many of the young people away, celebration has been postponed for the duration.

If the families of the Nims, Hopkins, Woods, other pioneers, can produce as much story as the late Enoch Burdick Brown was able to gather about the Browns, such an anniversary would ramify through a wide swath of history – from 1638 to the present.

Memorial cairns do not bother much with women pioneers, but if one knows the story of the leading women of a family, one pretty well knows all.   Violetta Paine, born in Bolton, Conn., can never have dreamed where her marriage to Capt. Benajah Brown of the Winchester militia would lead her and her descendants.   Violetta was the daughter of Col. Brinton Paine of the Revolutionary Army, later a member of the New York Legislature, first judge of Tioga County.   Her uncle was Gen. Paine, for whom Painsville, Ohio, erected a statue.   Tradition even claims that Tom Paine, whose pamphlet, "Common Sense" is now considered the key that turned the American Revolution, was of the same family.   Violetta’s husband took up 600 acres at Genesco, N.Y., occupied the tract for several years, when Gen. Wadsworth claimed possession, and having influence, dispossessed Cap. Brown.

Incensed that the country for which he had fought would not support the honest rights of a citizen, Capt. Benajah shook its dust from his feet, moved his family to Canada (1797); and the niece of the American Gen. Paine, knit socks for the British garrison at Fort Erie.   Later, Capt. Brown under Chief Brant, taught agriculture to the Indians on Grand River.   Finally the Browns, homesteaded west of Ingersoll.   It was when returning from Little York with the deed that Capt. Brown’s team went through the ice in Burlington Bay and he was drowned.   Violetta sold the Ingersoll farm, moved her nine children to a farm east of Port Rowan, a more cultural district.   She married Samuel Nichols.   The lady died (1844) at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Sam Harper, Malahide, and rests in the Burdick Cemetery east of Aylmer.

Elizabeth Hoy was another woman who, like her mother-in-law, Violetta, was to realize strange adventures from the Brown quality of rapid, dynamic decision.   Elizabeth married Brinton Paine Brown, born at Genesco N.Y., 1797, and educated at Port Rowan.   The couple had just settled on 200 acres west of Courtland, now called old Ronson homestead, had two acres cleared, when her husband came in from the woods one morning, brought the ox-sled to the door and requested Elizabeth to pack up!   The startled bride protested.   But Brinton Paine Brown had suddenly decided he might work tow lifetimes clearing off these pines and their stumps "and the deed wouldn’t hold the land from blowing away."

After a period of working on shares in Walsingham, Brinton Paine Brown had another inspiration.   He, Abram Smith, a brother-in-law, young Burnham, each drew 100 acres in Sombra Township on the St. Clair River, nearly 300 miles by water.   They built a "Durham" boat, laid a floor, bunks in it, canvassed the front over, brought on the women, the five children.   With sail and oar, hugging the land, they reached the mouth of the Detroit River when a very black storm arose.   They steered for a house on shore.   The water became so shallow that M. Brown had to wade some distance, carrying the women and children to land.

While the men sought a place to tie the boat, the women approached the house.   The owner, a French-Canadian Catholic, refused to entertain Protestants, allowing them only a leaky, straw-roofed stable for shelter, selling them milk, bread and butter for the pittance of cash they had.   The anguish of the next 36 hours was never forgotten by those women.   The boat had disappeared in the open lake; the men did not return.   All the next day they took turns watching the shore and being cursed by the Frenchman.   What could they do?   Walk back home with tow babes in arms, no bridges, roads, money, provisions?   Impossible!   In despair they could only pray.   As for the men in the boat, beaten to the open lake by the storm, they could only run before the wind.   Smith and Burnham, seasick, lay down in their bunks to die.   But Brinton Paine Brown stuck by the helm, and finally glimpsed a small island, steered in its lee and tied up in a cove.   His companions refused to leave from the shelter until the lake was calm and it was the second morning before they got to shore and relieved the tension of the women.

And when at last they reached their claims, Brinton Paine Brown found his to be mostly black ash swamp and nearly half a mile from the river!   They stuck it out until the deed was won, then trekked once more to Walsingham.

Mr. Brown’s next venture was happier – a farm in Southwold, near Five Stakes – 40 acres cleared.   After her wanderings, those 17 prosperous years at Pain’s Mills must have seemed like heaven to Elizabeth Hoy Brown.   Good frame house and barn, a new school, a Methodist meeting, out of debt.   But Brinton Paine Brown was again deciding they must move to a new land, for their nine sons and four daughters, to settle about the ????   Many neighbors having moved west to the States, Mr. Brown took a trip out there.   But, the Middle West was filled with ague.   Anyway, Brinton Paine Brown preferred forest land to open country.

Then a friend, a hunter by the name of Crippen, mentioned Dereham.   "Beech and maple.   No better land.   Big block to be had cheap right now." – and that is how Elizabeth Brown was called upon to leave comfort near St. Thomas and trek over those awful floating logs to the Brownsville cabin 100 years ago to the land...

...about the milk and honey...

Brinton Paine Brown prospered mightily, became a landed proprietor with 1,600 acres of some of the richest land in Ontario, on which he settled his sons.   And never were there such sons to work and help.   Even little Walter and Enoch, nine and 11 respectively, that first winter of 1841 – 42, measured off two acres on their own, cleared it, chopping logs from one to two feet through, in lengths, piling the brush, all in 13 days!   Until 1865, the Brown family pooled labor, stock, implements, until the younger boys were all married settled or educated.

Brinton Paine Brown was a man of decision in matters other than land.   He saw value in Christian neighbors, brought in this class about him at any sacrifice.   To secure John Loucks, Malahide, an "exhorter", the Browns took the 10 Loucks children in with their own 11, in their two-room cabin (one room downstairs, one up) until a Loucks cabin was erected.   It was the same with schools and churches which sprung up wherever this dynamic Brown went.   An ordained Methodist minister, Brinton Paine Brown usually preached twice a Sunday, promoting incipient churches in the district, as well as one in his own community.   He preached at Goshen , North Bayham, Corinth.   Tradition claims he was the first Methodist preacher in Tillsonburg.   He conducted many marriages.   Amasa Wood of St. Thomas was married by him.   And he was constantly in attendance at funerals far and near.

He knew various ways to pay for land.   In a day when $1 was as hard to come by as is now $100, the Southwold farm was largely paid for by breeding, selling horses, breaking steers, for oxen and selling them.   Or he would burn 35,000 to 50,000 bricks, sell them, and then hire out to build them into chimneys, ovens.   He could lath and plaster, build a sleight, fashion a yoke.   Then pioneer cash expenses of the large Brown family were infinitesimal, a trifle for carding wool into rolls, "fulling" flannel for the boys’ suits, so much cash per child to the school teacher.   A shoemaker came once a year to peg footwear; the tanner cured the hides on shares.   They scorched beans and peas for coffee; the maples gave them sugar and syrup; their biscuits were raised with saleratus from the lye of corn cob ash.   And yet the Browns were progressive.   The new cylinder threshing machine, grain separator – all advanced equipment had only to prove their worth and they were bought.   Enoch Brown in his day became an internationally known cattle shipper.

But the old pioneers knew little of such things.   To earn all, pay out the least you can, was the saving law of pioneer existence.   The struggle for balance between labor and capital, the still unsettled give and take rights of social economy, all were to be nursed and bred by the hectic machine-age in the 100 years between them and 1942.