Catherine Brown Long

Milton Long and Catherine Brown Long

Catherine Brown Long was my great-great grandmother---Thomas Henry Long's mother (her other children were Jeptha Long , Milton Martin Long, Nora Long Couch, Sarah Jane Long Maness, Susan Long Wallace, Mary Evaline Long Hughes, and James C. Long). This page of the 1898 Atlas has Maness, Couch, Long, Brown, Graham farms---they sure didn't go far to find spouses back then, did they?
Catherine Caroline Brown Long was the daughter of Henry G. Brown and Mary Polly Graham---both names are "old" Jefferson County names. Henry G. Brown was apparently the constable of the Big River Township (click here to see---on the document with guardianship of Thomas's children)


There was a Brown School and there is still a Brown's Ford Rd. If you look at the map, it's still there today and looking at an 1898 map, you can see that the Big River runs past their land.

I don't recall any stories about Catherine, but Fred Long (T.H.'s son) did write an article about the houses that his families lived in including the "Old Stone House". Click here for that blog. Fred never says who built the house. Although T. H. Long grew up in this house, as an adult he lived down the road in what mother always described as the Wiley House (T.H.'s first wife was the daughter of S.S. Wiley). If you look at the map below you'll see Wiley land and a sliver of Thomas Long land just above the Huskey's in the corner. The black square is where the farmhouse is----where Thomas H. Long lived. Up the road where the Grahams have land is where I think the Old Stone House is.

In 1898, it would appear that the land belonged to Grahams. I need to buy an earlier atlas or go to Hillsboro to research, but I'm guessing that the house was built by Grahams. Milton and Catherine lived there, but maybe didn't own it. The Long land was further down the road and is even on two pages of the 1898 atlas---notice Thomas and Jeptha's land are next to each other (upper left corner) One page has "Thomas A. Long" and another had "Thomas L. Long", but I'm pretty sure it should be "Thomas H. Long".