Person:Meshach Browning (1)

About Meshach Browning

The youngest of four children born to Joshua and Nancy Browning, Meshach Browning is considered by many to be the greatest hunter in Maryland's history. Following the death of Joshua just two weeks after the birth of Meshach, Nancy Browning moved her young family from Frederick County to the unsettled land of Allegany County. Here, Browning lived with his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. John Spurgeon. Browning recalled his accounts in his autobiography, Forty-Four Years of The Life of A Hunter, published just before his death in 1859. Although Browning only attended school for one term, he penned the book himself with turkey quills, gathered for him by his grandchildren. Browning estimates that during his career he killed "from 1800 to 2000 deer, from 300 to 400 bears, and about 50 panthers and catamounts, with scores of wolves and wildcats." Browning purchased a 75-acre military lot at Sang Run from Dr. Brooker in 1806, and began construction of a homestead. He added a mill to the property in 1826, which operated until 1892. In 1856, Browning sold his homestead at Sang Run to his eldest son, William. The property consisted of 200 acres, a mill, and a homestead. During his lifetime, Browning helped settle Allegany County, by patenting numerous tracts of land. Browning had a brief military career during the War of 1812, serving in the Maryland Militia, at first as a sergeant at Selby's Port, and then as a captain. He never saw combat, refusing to march to the front line, before heading home to Sang Run. His father, Joshua, and grandfather, William, had served in the British Army under General Braddock during the French and Indian War. A Democrat, Browning served as Justice of the Peace at Sang Run, and in 1847 ran for the Maryland House of Delegates. He lost the election to John Galloway Lynn by two hundred votes

Meshach lived with his uncle John Spurgeon in his early years due to the death of his father. In 1792, he moved in with John Spurgeon's brother, James, who lived in the Sandy Creek settlement of Monongalia County, VA,. ("Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter") His original home with Mary McMullen was noted to be at Sang Run in Allegany County, later Garrett County, MD. (About 4 miles from the MD-WV line) However, their second home was later noted to be in Preston County, VA when the Maryland -West Virginia line was finalized.

Cause of death: Pneumonia

1. ↑ Ancestry.com. Public Member Trees: (Note: not considered a reliable primary source)
   Ancestry Family Trees.
2. ↑ Ancestry.com. Public Member Trees: (Note: not considered a reliable primary source)
   Ancestry Family Tree.
3.   Hoye, Charles Edward. Garrett County history of pioneer families. (Washington [District of Columbia]: Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, 1987).

   Statement of Meshach Browning in his book "“Forty-four Years of the Life of a Hunter.”, published in 1859:
   
   “I was born in Frederick County, in the State of Maryland, in the year of our Lord, 1781. My father’s name was Joshua Browning and my mother’s name was Nancy. He was a farmer with limited means and with his wife resided cn a small farm; having little to recommend them in this world but an unsullied nar and known only as toeing strictly honest, industrious, and truthful.
   “They lived a happy life together until they had four children — one daughter named Dorcas, and three sons, Joshua, Jeremiah, and myself, called Meshack. My mother be¬ came a widow when I was an infant of two weeks old; and, after the business of the estate was settled, there was tout a trifle left for the support of the little family; and she was obliged to maintain herself and children as best she could.”
   Thus Meshack Browning begins the story of his life in his book, “Forty-four Years of the Life of a Hunter.” Coming to western Allegany County about 1790, where he resided almost sevently years—-the period when the present Garrett County was settled and developed— a man of keen observation and retentive memory—Browning’s auto¬biography is intensely interesting and the best account we have, not only of hunting, but also of the early customs and growth of our County.
   A few years after the death of her husband, Nancy Browning, with Jos¬ hua and Meshack, joined their relatives and friends an the “back-woods” at the headwaters of Flintstone in Allegany County. Here Mes¬ hack went to live with an Aunt, the wife of John Spurgin, and the Spurgins induced him to go with them “to the prettiest country in the world.” Early one morning, with their packhorses and cattle, they started westward thru Cumberland, thence over the Braddock road to the Little Crossings, where they took the trail to the Blooming Rose settlement. The family halted a month or two at Blooming Rose, then settled by the Buffalo Marsh, (McHenry), where they took posession of the clearing, garden and cab¬ in formerly occupied by the Friend brothers. The forests here abounded with all kinds of wild animals and bees, and the streams contained trout without number.
   “Soon our table was abundantly supplied with venison and honey; and the high fredi tame grass earn¬ ed our cows to give large quantities of milk.”
   At trie Buffalo Marsh “things went on well enough until the news came to us that Gen. St. Clair’s whole army had been defeated and cut to pieces” by the Indians in Ohio. The Spurgins were alarmed and returned to Blooming Rose. “In that neighborhood there were some thir¬ ty or forty families, who were not so easily frightened. Here we continued until the next Spring, being 1792.” They then moved across the State line into Virginia, where J'as. Spurgin lived; but Uncle John soon “became restless” and moved back to Blooming Rose.
   The Spurgins’ nearest neighbors at Blooming Rose were an Irish family named McMullen, and among the five McMullen children was Mary, then in her twelfth year! Meshack was six months older.
   He wrote: “Soon there was a school to be made up, and my uncle signed me for three months, and, to my great pleasure, Mr. McMullen signed Mary and Hugh.-1 done everything I could to get into her favor until the school broke up. I had learned finely, and Mary had taken every opportunity to assist me in my lessons for she had been at school three months before .... and when we left school I could read and write as well as she could.”
   
   But the course of Meshack’s early courtship was beset with many difficulties; Mary’s father did not ap-v prove. Then the lad’s aunt, “unexpectedly” after being married about twenty years, became a mother, and, having a child of her own, she be¬ came cross and cruel to Meshack. About this time, when Meshack was almost sixteen, he took his first shot at a deer, wounded it, and finally succeeded in cutting the struggling animal’s throat.
   Meshack Seeks His Fortune.
   Believing himself now able to face the world alone, young Browning bid his Mary a tender gooaiby, and, on a winter day, started walking toward Wheeling with a dollar in his pocket. He slopped over night with his uncle James, then turned north to the Braidock road and Union- town, where he had the good for¬ tune to meet his aged grandfather, William Browning, and his mother, Nancy, who had remarried and was living in the neighborhood. Meshack spent a week with his kindred, then walked on to Wheeling, where he found work at the home of John Caldwell.
   While at the Oaldiwell blockhouse Meshack went with a party on his first bear hunt. One of the hunters wounded a bear, and Meshack, having no gun, killed it with a club.
   The Caldwell’s had a handsome daughter, Nancy, and young Brown¬ ing’s friendship with her was his un¬doing; Nancy was sent away on a visit, and when Meshack’s contract for four months was completed he was discharged, and left Wheeling. He again visited his mother and step-father,, and persuaded them to move with him to Blooming Rose, and—to Mary.
   
   Courtship and Marriage
   
   Of these days at Blooming Rose Browning wrote;
   “I continued with great glee to partake of all the pleasures, attending the dances, shooting matches, etc.; and courting Mary occasionally, till our love was so confirmed, that we were never so well pleased in any other company but that of ourselves. In the year 1799, we being each in our eighteenth year, by the advice of both of our mothers, we agreed to put an end, by marriage, to a courtship of five or six years’ continuance.” Then Meshack asked Mr. McMullen for his consent, and he rather ungraciously replied, “You have had this matter all arranged among yourselves, and I shall not meddle with it now. You may take her as soon as you please.”
   So on the last day of April a gay wedding party mounted horses at Blooming Rose “and rode at a rattling pace” thru forests fresh-leafed and blossoming into Pennsylvania.
   “In a few hours we found ourselves at the magistrate’s office, and were soon called to stand up before that sagacious officer, who was a Presbyterian, and professed great piety. He gave us such a lengthy exhortation that I became tired of his noise; but at length he got into the right way by saying, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”
   “Mr. McMullen, having become somewhat softened, through the ad¬ vice of his friends, had prepared a dinner for our little but light-heart¬ ed party, and the night was spent with music and dancing.”
   The young couple had each other but they had no home prepared, tho Meshack had traded his horse “for a small squatter’s farm—and a good cabin.” He traded his flint-lock gun for a cow. They loaded their “little goods” on a sled and moved into the new home.
   Two happy years passed on the Blooming Rose, the young husband fanning a little and hunting a great deal; The census enumerator in 1800 listed Meshack Browning, age 19, as head of a family of three: Little Dorcas had arrived.
   By this time I had, by trading, managed to obtain three cows and eleven sheep, which, with my colt, constituted all my property.”
   But Browning had only a squatter’s right to his little farm, and early in 1801 “a false claimant came.” The pioneers decided to move to that hunter’s paradise “The Glades.”

4.   United States. 1850 U.S. Census Population Schedule. (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432).

   Name: Meshack Browning
   Age: 69
   Birth Year: abt 1781
   Home in 1850: District 10, Allegany, Maryland, USA
   Gender: Male
   Family Number: 579
   Household Members: Name Age
   Meshack Browning 69
   Mary Browning 56
   Michl Lear 8
   J W A Browning 20
   Hannah Browning 22
   Eugene Browning 2
   Sarah L Browning 0