O. T. Brown letter

Collection

Identifier: W-0154

No requestable containers

Scope and Contents

This letter written by O. T. Brown of San Marcos, Texas, to the president of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is more of a treatise on how no one had yet been able to adequately describe for the next generations the emotional part of the Civil War rather than describing any actual engagements he had seen. He mentions that he spent a significant portion of the war as a prisoner of war in a prison on an island in one of the Great Lakes near the Canadian border.

Dates

Creation: 1898-05-26

Creator

Williams, A. S., III (Collector, Person)
Brown, Ossian (Author, Person)

Biographical / Historical

Ossian Tigner (O. T.) Brown, was born to Dr. Charles Anderson Brown from Savannah, Georgia, and Mary Mulkey Brown from Jones County, Georgia, in about 1836.

A native of Georgia from Meriwether County, he served in the Confederate States Army (CSA) in Company C of the Fourth Alabama Infantry Regiment, which was originally organized at Dalton, Georgia, on May 2, 1861. He was captured at some point early in the war and spent a considerable time in a prison camp on an island in one of the Great Lakes near the Canadian border.

After the war, he relocated to Texas, where he met and married Elizabeth Pauline Belvin on November 13, 1877, in Hays County, Texas (probably in the San Marcos area). Elizabeth was the daughter of a prominent local Methodist minister and educator, the Reverend R. H. Belvin and his wife, Caroline W. Mitchell Belvin. The couple four children: Caroline Belvin Brown; Mary Ossian Brown; Charlotte Woodmancy Brown; and Lillian Robert Brown.

Brown became a successful San Marcos attorney and civic leader and was very involved in the Methodist Church in the San Marcos area. Ossian Tigner Brown passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in San Marcos, Hays, Texas, on August 7, 1935.

Source: Find A Grave website

Extent

0.05 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Letter from O. T. Brown to the president of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy describing his experiences as a soldier during the Civil War.

Physical Location

A. S. Williams III Americana Collection, Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, They University of Alabama

Provenance

Gift of A. S. Williams III, 2010

Related Materials

The A. S. Williams III Americana Collection has other collections of reminiscences of Civil War soldiers collected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Please see staff for assistance.