Erma Holtzclaw Brown (1816-1901)

This is Anna’s ancestor Ermon Holtzclaw Brown (1816-1901). She was married to Joseph Brown and lived in the Milton/Alpharetta area, north of Roswell, Georgia.

Imagine what a life-span from 1816 to 1901 would be like. When she was born James Madison was president and next James Monroe. Those are people remotely in history books. Electricity, for the most part, had not been thought of much when she was young. Slavery was as normal as everyday living. She survived the harshness of the Civil War and the end of slavery. Sometime in her youth trains came to be and later in her middle age and elderly age electricity, telephones, and indoor plumbing were around but not very common out in the rural areas.

Other little conveniences were being invented during her life that she would have to have did without for a period of her life before they were invented – things like toilet paper, six shooter guns, cars, traffic lights, photographs, movies and Coca Cola.

I suppose the human race is so innovative and creative it is hard to think of a time that didn’t go through some changes. Even my mundane life: I was born in 1941. It was about 1948 or 1949 before I saw a television. About ten or eleven years later I saw a television in color. And in the 60s if you thought of a computer you thought of a big Univac thing as big as a house and you fed information to it my feeding it Holorath-code punched cards. And last but not least, Diet Coke.

And the advancements and changes are not over – and never will be, as long as the human race survives.