Showing posts with label Brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brown. Show all posts

February 12 - Happy Birthday, Barnum Brown

      Posted on February 12, 2022

This is an update of my post published on February 12, 2011:



Last year I wrote about biologist Charles Darwin and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln - both of whom were hugely important - and both of whom where born on February 12, 1809.



Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln aren't the only folks of note born on February 12. Some other birthdays include:

Christina Ricci – 1980 – actress
Judy Blume – 1938 – author
Bill Russell – 1934 – basketball legend
Anna Pavlova – 1881 – ballerina
Barnum Brown – 1873 – paleontologist



Speaking of Barnum Brown:


Quick, think of a dinosaur species name!

Even more quickly, name a carnivorous dinosaur!


If you are like most people, you probably thought of Tyrannosaurus rex after one or both of those prompts. This giant, fierce-looking meat-eater is one of the most recognizable and iconic dinosaurs and is part of modern popular culture. But you probably didn't know the name of the guy who found the first T-rex skeletons...until now.

Born on this day in 1873, Barnum Brown was named after the circus promoter P.T. Barnum. He grew up to be a paleontologist—a scientist who collects and studies fossils. It was Brown who discovered the first two partial skeletons of Tyrannosaurus rex, although some teeth and fragments had been found earlier. (They were not enough of a specimen to be recognized and named as a separate species.)


At the time of his discoveries, Brown was the assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History. He found the T- rex fossils in Wyoming (in 1900) and in Montana (in 1902). Tyrannosaurus rex lived all over the western portion of North America about 67 to 65.5 million years ago.

Brown collected many, many more fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures as well. He and his team used a flatboat to float down the Red Deer River in Canada in the middle 1910s, looking for promising-looking fossil sites. I find it funny that another group of fossil hunters, the Sternberg family, tried to outdo them by hunting for fossil sites on the same stretch of river in a rivalry that was apparently friendly!



How do we know what T-rex ate?

Check out the Enchanted Learning website for a lesson on dinosaur diets. 

For more on dinosaurs, try National Geographic for Kids.














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March 10 - Happy Birthday, Hallie Quinn Brown

Posted on March 10, 2019

She was the daughter of enslaved people.

She worked hard to become educated (including becoming the first woman to earn a degree of Master of Science at Wilberforce University) - and she also gave back by working hard to help others get good educations.

I have written those sorts of sentences several times before. I keep finding stories about strong black women who achieved on their own merits but also worked to benefit others. Today's education hero is Hallie Quinn Brown.

Born in Pennsylvania on this date in 1849, Brown spent some of her childhood in Canada and studied at Wilberforce University in Ohio. 

Even though it was tougher to go South, far from her family and friends, Brown chose to do that because she felt she was more needed there. She taught children at "plantation schools" and also started a class for older folks so that they could learn to read. She worked in schools in South Carolina and in Mississippi before the organized suppression of black people in 1874 and 1875 made a rough place even rougher.

Brown returned to Ohio, where she got a teaching position and, later, a traveling-and-speaking position on behalf of her alma mater, Wilberforce. Brown is actually known for her mastery of elocution, which is the study of formal speaking - pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone. She apparently coaxed waves of laughter from her audiences when she wished to, or genuine tears, when she wanted that. She was considered to have a "magnetic" voice, and she could vary that voice in a bajillion ways.

When Brown returned to working in schools, she became a dean of one university, principal of Tuskegee Institute, and eventually professor at Wilberforce. She continued to speak at conferences and to help found organizations such as the Colored Women's League of Washington, D.C. 

I read that Brown was born (as I stated above) in 1849 and that she died in '49, as well - and I was thinking that it was a huge mistake, but then I realized that she'd died in 1949. She lived to be 100 years old!



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August 11 - Happy Birthday to a Gentleman Farmer!

Posted on August 11, 2018

Today's birthday is famous locally - in the area around Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. 

I couldn't find a photo
of Warren Brown,
but this fellow was
considered a gentleman
farmer, too.
Warren Brown was a farmer, but he was considered a gentleman farmer. That probably mostly means that he didn't do the hard or the grimy work on his large estate, but rather owned and managed the workers on the estate.

Brown, who was born in New Hampshire on this date in 1836, was more than just a gentleman farmer. He was president of his state's Agricultural Society, a politician at the state level, a businessman who operated a saw mill and invested in electric railways, a historian, and an author of a two-volume book on local history.


But all of that admirable stuff is not the main thing I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about haunted houses and rewriting history.

Haunted houses...

Above, Sunnyside.

Below, the house of the Addams
Family, on TV. It's possible that
the fact that Sunnyside is a
Victorian house that looks a
bit like the Addams Family's
house probably helped foster
those haunted house rumors.
So, in 1999 a guy named George Blaisdell and his wife bought an old Victorian house that was the very house that Warren Brown and his wife Sarah built, way back in the late 1800s. Brown's wife had named the house Sunnyside. And when the Blaisdells bought it, Sunnyside really, really, really needed a lot of repairs and a ton of TLC. 

Somehow, Blaisdell - in all the mucking about with a mucky basement, in the removal of dead animals (hundreds of dead squirrels and bats!) from the attic, in the jacking up the slumping kitchen floor and repair of almost everything - well, somehow Blaisdell got the idea that Sunnyside was haunted.

Once an idea like that takes root, all sorts of small occurrences - a cre-e-e-e-eak here, a missing candle there - can begin to seem like further "proof" of the existence of ghosts. 

But of course there are other perfectly good explanations for vague sounds and small missing items. 

Apparently, Blaisdell's ghostly idea spread to the community, and there were whispered rumors that Sunnyside was haunted. It wasn't long before local handymen and plumbers decided that they'd seen or heard something downright mysterious at the house. 

Blaisdell invited mediums and ghost hunters to come inspect the property. Naturally, everyone seemed to have enough weird experiences to draw the conclusion that the house COULD be haunted - but nobody was able to get any proof, not even a little bit.

At least three ghost-hunting shows have been filmed at Sunnyside. Still - no actual evidence.

Some of the ghost hunters took the time to track down and talk to former owners of the house. I don't think you will be surprised to hear that these former owners suddenly realized that they'd lived in a haunted house! Suddenly these folks would remember a strange experience that could be explained by the whole ghost thing.

All of these things are examples of suggestion, confirmation bias, suggestion, and the malleability of memory. 

Suggestion means that we often see, hear, and feel the things that we expect to see, hear, and feel. We may interpret moving air or a small sound as nothing of interest in one location but as a ghost in a place we've been told is haunted.
Confirmation bias means that we see, hear, and feel what we WANT to see, hear, and feel. We interpret things as confirming what we already believe to be true.


Something is malleable if it can easily be formed and reformed. Silly putty and modeling clay are malleable - and so is human memory. We can easily change our memories - what's hard is noticing that we are doing so!

Rewriting history...

In 2006, a group of Hampton Falls folks got together and started the Warren Brown Foundation. They were determined to discover the Brown family's past - and they started a website so that they share their findings.

The trouble was, the descendants of Warren and Sarah Brown still lived in the area, and they were a bit upset that this group hadn't consulted them about this Foundation. They pointed out that knowledge of the Browns wasn't mysteriously missing or in need of "digging up," and they pointed out that the first of the "findings" publicized on the website weren't accurate.

Stop re-writing our family's history, was basically the message.

The Warren Brown Foundation was soon discontinued, apparently, and the website was taken down. The moral of the story is, if you want to honor and discuss a person from history, maybe chat with her or his descendants first.



Also on this date:
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