SARAH BROWNING

The following bio was taken from page 131 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Shirley Koym

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

Sarah Browning did not know why Thomas did not return from the Civil War with his regiment. One soldier told her that he saw Thomas shot down by the Yankees. She was left with five small children to raise. Her eleven dollars a month supplement from the war would not buy shoes and staple food nor pay the high taxes on her little farm. Rumors of the carpetbaggers coming north of Clearwater, Florida, forced many families to leave their homes. Sarah joined a wagon train that was forming across the creek from her home. Recent rains caused the creek to flow over its banks. This did not stop the brave, independent spunky, Sarah. She took one child at a time and swam the raging, muddy creek. Julia has told many times how she remembers being carried across the swollen creek by her mother. The wagon train with Sarah and her five children – John Thomas, Julia, Sallie, Lena, and Minnie – headed westward and settled in Rusk County. Sarah was wooed and won by a handsome Yankee man from Canada, Erastus Parr. They had three children – Margaret, Elizabeth, and George Parr.

Thomas was alive and he finally made his way home from the war. He searched in vain for his family. The neighbors told him that they had left for Texas. After years of fruitless searching, he assumed them dead and remarried. He was old, ill, and soon to die. The urge to find his lost family lay heavy on him. Searching clue after clue, he found John Thomas in Houston, Texas. John Thomas was a Methodist preacher and an elderly man himself. Sarah and her daughter, Lena, had died by this time. What a surprise to find this old man, whom Thomas believed to be dead, sitting in his office. John Thomas got in touch with his sisters. What a wonderful feeling to known that the mystery of their father’s whereabouts was solved. Thomas died a few months after his Texas visit and is buried in Clearwater, Florida.

Submitted by Browning descendants