But it was James Joseph J. Brown, a silver mine supervisor, who met her at a church picnic and stole her heart. A few years after they were married, J. He struck gold in The Little Johnny Mine, making them millionaires overnight. With the newfound wealth, the Browns moved to Denver.
Brown used the money to learn foreign languages, educate herself, and to travel. Originally her daughter Helen was supposed to accompany her, but she decided to stay on in Paris, where she was studying at the Sorbonne. JoAnn began researching Brown because the sinking of the Titanic was approaching its th anniversary.
Brown was a brave and sometimes brazen woman with strong leadership qualities, according to JoAnn. Her indifference to what others thought of her fueled her ability to stay the course. JoAnn considers herself an organizer as well. She owned her own tour business for nearly 15 years, which required a lot of organizational skills while volunteering as the executive director of Preston Community Arts Center and acting on stage and in film.
The town was like a giant mining camp, and Brown found work doing sewing for a local store. Her life soon changed when she met J. Brown, a mining superintendent. The couple fell in love and married in September Molly and J. Brown struggled financially in the early days of their marriage. They had their first child, Lawrence Palmer Brown, in , and a daughter, Catherine Ellen, followed two years later. As her husband rose up the ranks at the mining company, Brown became active in the community, helping miners and their families and working to improve the town's schools.
Molly Brown was never interested in fitting in with the other leading citizens of Leadville, preferring to dress in dramatic hats. The Browns achieved great prosperity through the discovery of gold at Little Johnny Mine in , with J.
She also raised money for children's causes and continued to help mine workers. And in an unheard of feat for women at the time, Brown also ran for a Colorado state senate seat at the turn of the century, though she eventually withdrew from the race.
The Brown marriage was not a happy one, however, with J. Leadville miners and their families often lived near the mines, particularly in the winter months when the journey to town could be cold and treacherous. Despite harsh working conditions and the rarity of success stories, the heady sense that a regular workingman could become rich dominated Leadville until , when everything came tumbling down in the Silver Crash.
While Leadville already had its share of transience and instability, the crash created extraordinary poverty and anxiety. It was in this environment that J. With their new money and an already growing circle of friends, the Browns purchased what would become their long-time Denver home on Pennsylvania Avenue now Street in By the s, the Denver skyline was filled with hotels, office blocks and looming brick smokestacks.
Denver was the point of entry and departure for raw goods and there were smelters on all sides. Slums grew up on the outskirts of downtown. Children especially struggled with poverty and homelessness and drew the attention of progressive reformers. The Progressive movement had grown out of the social turmoil created by industrialization and dense urban environments; Margaret joined the reformers to install public baths in the courthouse and advocate for more public parks and other city improvements.
She also worked closely with controversial reformer Ben Lindsey, a Denver judge and politician who pioneered the creation of the first juvenile court system west of the Mississippi. In addition to the philanthropy made possible by their wealth, the Browns enjoyed another new pursuit, travel. In Margaret and J. While the trip appeared to bridge the distance between the pair for some years, in , after 23 years of marriage, the Browns quietly signed a separation agreement.
According to the agreement, Margaret received a cash settlement and maintained possession of the house on Pennsylvania Street. The two never divorced, but the separation lasted until J. Helen traveled extensively with Margaret during one of the busiest periods of her life.
Her scrapbook contains historical gems that broadened our understanding of Margaret. The links below will lead you to dynamic visuals of that information created by Molly Brown House Museum student interns from Johns Hopkins University. An interactive Adobe Spark exhibit by Clint Osman. An interactive timeline by Amy Federico. Now more independent than ever, Margaret departed on a trip to Egypt, Rome and Paris with her daughter Helen, and friends J. To technology-obsessed Americans, the Titanic represented new heights in innovation and achievement.
The popular story is that J. Kristen Iversen says he did become rich, but not until they had been married for seven years and had two children. In eighteen ninety-four the Browns bought a house in Denver, Colorado. The popular story is that rich families in Denver society did not accept them because they had been poor and lacked education. But she says the Browns were a big part of Denver society. Margaret became involved in social and political events, hosting dinners to raise money for charities.
She traveled around the world and sent her children to school in France. She learned foreign languages and took college classes. She also began to speak out for progressive causes. She raised money for schools and the poor.
And she worked with a judge in Denver to establish the first court in the country to deal only with young people. The huge ship hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. More than one thousand five hundred people died, while just over seven hundred survived.
We're in the middle of the North Atlantic. Now do you people want to live, or do you want to die? What's the matter with ya?
It's your men out there. In real life, Brown is credited with keeping people's spirits up in the lifeboat until they were rescued by another ship, the Carpathia. Later, she raised money to help poor immigrant women who had been passengers on the lower levels of the Titanic.
0コメント