Francis Marion Brown

Mr. & Mrs. Francis Marion Brown

Written by Mary (Cone) Smith from the Brown history
owned by his granddaughters, Clara Box and Dola Blackwood

Francis Marion Brown was born in middle Tennessee on February 16, 1835.   The family moved to Arkansas when Marion was three years old.  They moved to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was nine, and then back to Arkansas.

When he was a young man, he married.  Due to some kind of disease that was rampant at that time, his wife and baby died.  Also, his wife's mother, who had come to be with them, died.  After recovery from these sad events and since he had no family responsibilities, he was hired by a wealthy friend, who owned a plantation near Memphis, to make a trip to Texas (this is now Salado, Texas, 50 miles north of Austin).  He rode horseback from Memphis to Central Texas.  While he was there he attended a square dance.  There he met Mary Narcissus Cone.  She and her sister, Melissa, were orphans and lived with a Mr. Cone).  After two or three months, Francis Marion Brown married Mary Narcissus Cone on October 31, 1861.  He was 26 years old and she was 16.  Three months after his marriage, he joined the Army of the Confederacy. 

After the war, Marion Brown and family moved from Green County, Arkansas, to Texas.  Then they moved to Price's Falls in the Indian Territory.   They leased land from the Indians.  Marion had a mill and a cotton gin near Price's Falls.

Their children were: Lillian Ideller, who married George Dickinson; Dora Jane, who married A.L. (B) Pickens; Mary Alice, who married Charles E. Taylor; Nora Maud, who married Joe Conway; Willa Mae, who married Murray McKelvey; and Mattie Francis, who married Ira E. Pacey.

Two children died in infancy.  They also reared Mary Bronw's dephew, David Brown Cone, the son of Edward Frank Cone.  Edward Frank was the youngest child of a family of six whose mother died when Dave, as he was called, was four years old.  He lived with the Marion Browns until he married.

Marion Brown died April 15, 1928

Sergeant

Company D, 25th Arkansas Infantry

Born February 16, 1835 in Franklin County, Tennessee

Died April 15, 1928

Francis's military unit is taken from a 1905 booklet called "Chickasaw Souvenir", while the archives in Oklahoma City lists him as in Company B, from a 1913 list.

  Francis Marion Brown lived in Arkansas in 1838 before moving to Memphis in 1844, then back to Arkansas.  After the war he moved from Green County, Arkansas to Texas, then later to Price's Falls, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory.  The Wynnewood census of 1900 shows lists him among it's residents and as a day laborer.

Complied & Contributed by:
Michael Andrew Grissom

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