The Browning Line

My great-grandfather Cornelius Browning was born on the 10th of September, 1834 in Union County, South Carolina ("A" in the top map at left). I don’t know much about his parents except that their names were Jesse and Jane. The facts that I have were on an old U.S. Census roll, with no details.

Sometime before 1838, Cornelius and his parents had moved to Barbour County, Alabama ("B" in the top map at left), and it is there that Jane gave birth to a second son, whom they named Jesse, after his father.

Fourteen years later, on the 10th of November, 1852, the Brownings were still in Barbour County when Cornelius married Emmaline Eidson (or Edson?). I don't know much more about Emmaline than I do about her parents-in-law. Her own parents’ names were James and Rhoda.

Emmaline gave birth to my maternal grandfather, John Daniel Browning, on the 16th of November in 1853, near Mobile, Alabama ("B" in the bottom map at left), a year after her marriage to Cornelius.
Three years later, on the 26th of December, 1859, Emmaline and Cornelius were still in Alabama when she gave birth to a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Browning.

The family must have moved to Texas soon after the birth of their second daughter, however, as when the 1860 census was taken, they were listed on the rolls in Brownsboro, in Henderson County, Texas ("C" in the bottom map at left). I have heard my Uncle Dan tell that my grandfather John Daniel or JD (though I always knew him as “Papa”) drove the wagon part of the way from Alabama to Texas because Cornelius’ sore leg (see below) bothered him so. JD, who would have been six at the time, was very young for that.