Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

“Remembering Baby Brinson”

For Those people that may wonder where and how I get my stories for my article, I’ll explain how a typical ‘story for another day’ happens.

I was reading the May 24, 1901 issue of Bloomington’s Prickly Pear when I found this item: “The infant child of Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Brinson, living south of the river, died the fore part of the week and was laid to rest in the Bloomington Cemetery last Tuesday.”

My first action was to find out where this family lived, and get out my old maps of our county and locate the. This name was not to be found in Oak Grove Township south of Bloomington. Next, I checked German Township, located straight south into Kansas and, sure enough, there was a farmstead belonging to James Brinson. The home was located on the NW *, the very northwest 40 acres of Section 8, about one mile south of the Nebraska-Kansas state line.

The next step was to call Jonquil Volk, who is in charge of Bloomington’s cemetery records. Indeed ‘Baby Brinson’ is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery. Jonquil took me directly to the Joseph Brinson lot where we found two graves. The grave to the south holds the body of Joseph Brinson, who died on May 30, 1905 at the age of 95. The north grave is that of Baby Brinson.

The two headstones are identical and made of a substance I don’t recognize. We could tell the graves held the Brinson by using our fingers to trace the outlines of the letters. Time will soon fade that knowledge away. The Joseph Brinson who is entombed in the south part of the cemetery is the grandfather of ‘Baby Brinson’. While at the cemetery we learned one more thing about the infant: the headstone reveals the name of my ‘Baby Brinson’ was E. Brinson.

The third thing I did was to go see Veda Clements, who is very knowledgeable about our county’s history.

I could sense Veda knew something by the ring of her voice. She was happy to learn about baby E. Brinson and asked me to stop by and pick up the Brinson File. A letter came just four months ago to Veda, Thanking her for help on the Brinsons, and that one letter told the whole story.

The Grandfather of E. Brinson, Joseph Brinson, first married Rebecca Myers, and they had six children. Then Joseph married a second time to Mildred Ann Hogg-Pruitt. They had one son named Joseph Stout Brinson, born October 1, 1874, maybe in southern Nebraska. It appears that Mildred was 47 at the time of young Joseph’s birth.

Joseph and Mildred left Winterset, Iowa for Kansas, sometime after their marriage in 1870. They ended up in German Township of Smith County, Kansas sometime around 1880. The Brinson’s (Joseph, Mildred and their son Joseph Stout) remained in this area until Old Joseph Brinson died and was buried in the Bloomington cemetery. They moved to Nebraska in about 1913 and lived on a ranch near Arnold. Young Joseph’s mother, Mildred Ann Hogg-Pruitt-Brinson died at the ranch in November 1916. She was buried in the local cemetery at Arnold.

Around 1940, Joseph Stout Brinson and his wife, Lena, moved to the state of Washington. Joseph Stout Brinson died in Toledo, Lewis County, Washington on February 15, 1969. Bill Pruitt the writer of the letter knows no data on Lena. “I show them with eight children” Bill says.

Next week we will continue on with more of the unfolding story of ‘Baby Brinson.’ As I have said before, it surprises even me, how these people’s lives are revealed to me.

All I knew a week ago was that ‘Baby Brinson’ passed away in the month of May 1901. I am able now to tell how his family came to German Township in Kansas. I hope you enjoy hearing the ending to our story of the Brinsons.

“Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown;

Fair science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own.”

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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