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Clara BrownClara Brown
1803-1885
Griot Museum of Black History

Description
Wearing a simple white blouse and long skirt, a woman stands next to a covered wagon; a wash tub and washboard are at her feet.  Standing tall and looking forward, Clara Brown’s hands rest on her hips.  The setting suggests there is a story of a pioneer woman waiting to be told—this larger-than-life, almost mythic figure exemplifies not only that, but a great deal more.

Early Years
Clara Brown was born into slavery in Virginia around 1803.  Although little is known about her father or early family history, separation and unexpected change dominated her life.  At about age three, she and her parents were put on the auction block; her father disappeared from her life forever.  She and her mother moved to the Kentucky frontier with their new owner Ambrose Smith, a tobacco farmer.  The Smith family was very religious, and in time Clara became a fervent Christian; she remained so throughout her life.  Her mother died unexpectedly while Clara was still quite young.  At the age of eighteen she married Richard Brown, another enslaved laborer at the Smith’s.  They had four children—Richard, Margaret, Paulina, and Eliza Jane.  When eight-year-old Paulina drowned in a creek, it was the beginning of yet another series of wrenching events.  Ambrose Smith died suddenly in 1835, and the Brown family was put on the auction block and split apart.  Clara watched helplessly as her husband and son, and two surviving daughters were sold separately from her. Clara Brown’s new owner, merchant George Brown, also lived in Kentucky.  Despite the trauma of separation, the next twenty years were relatively stable.  On numerous occasions, the Browns tried to help Clara trace her family.  No information was found on her husband and son, but she did learn that Margaret had died of a respiratory infection.  Eliza Jane disappeared in 1852—it was not known if she had been freed—so Clara Brown began her quest to find her.

St. Louis, then Kansas, and Colorado
George Brown’s death in 1857 brought Clara Brown freedom and $300.  However, free blacks were not allowed to stay in Kentucky.  With her “freedom” papers pinned inside her dress, she traveled to St. Louis and was hired as a cook by friends of her former owner.  Clara frequented the bustling wharf, always hopeful of spotting her daughter.  She learned Kansas Territory was open to homesteading by both blacks and whites, so when Clara’s employers moved there, she went too—another opportunity to find Eliza Jane.  Becky Johnson, also newly freed, taught Clara about running a laundry.  When Clara’s employers moved to California, she stayed in Kansas Territory, but the violence over issues of slavery there led Clara to join a wagon train going to Colorado.  She bartered with the miners to cook for them in exchange for having her laundry equipment taken along.  After walking most of the seven hundred miles, Clara settled in Cheery Creek (now Denver).  Soon thereafter she opened a laundry and area miners, most of whom were unmarried, paid well to have their dirt-laden clothing cleaned.  Success came quickly.  Active in the community, she gave generously and helped found the first Methodist church.  Although people were generally more accepting (blacks and whites worshiped together), the town was not without prejudice.  In 1860, she decided to move to the thriving town of Central City forty-five miles away.  Clara Brown helped found another Methodist church.  Liked and well-respected, “Aunt Clara,” as she was now called, returned to Kentucky in 1866 hoping to locate family.  Instead she discovered the plight of former slaves.  In the process of swiftly organizing a wagon train to take them west, she was swindled out of most of her savings—her inability to read or write made her vulnerable.  At age seventy and broke, she returned to discover her home had burned.  She went back to work and also nursed a group of ill, formerly enslaved people in a nearby encampment.  The community to which she gave so much now helped her financially.  In 1881, she was named a member of the Society of Colorado Pioneers—the first woman and the first black.  A surprise letter from friend Becky Johnson, now in Council Bluffs, Iowa, informed her that her daughter was there.  Eliza Jane was a widow with grown children; she was a laundress.  Clara’s community provided funds for her travel, and after forty-seven years she and Eliza Jane were reunited—her dream came true.  Clara Brown died in 1885.

National Connections
Through slavery, families were routinely separated, whether on the auction block or through an owner selling a piece of their “property” to someone else.  This was greatly feared.  After the end of the Civil War, many formerly enslaved people hoped to reunite with lost family members and sought help through the United Sates Department of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.  Better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, it was established after the Civil War to help the four million newly freed blacks make the transition from enslavement to freedom.  Despite their best efforts, most were not as successful as Clara Brown.  However, some newly freed blacks across the country did have the joy of being reunited with at least one loved one they had thought lost forever. 



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