Katherine A. Browning papers

From the donor's detailed notes: "Katherine A. Browning (1855-1936)...was born June, 1855, in New York State. Her widowed mother was living with the Brownings on the 1880 and 1900 censuses, giving her name as Mary Bliven and Mary D. Bliven, respectively, born July, 1830 in New York; according to the 1900 census she had given birth to two children, with only one living. Based on the census, the journals, and what my mother told me, she and her husband farmed. As you can see from the diaries, her days were spent doing the jobs required of a farm wife, including laundry, gathering eggs, trips to town, etc." She married William Q. Browning (1846-1936) at the age of 18 (1873). In 1900, the Brownings, who had no living biological children, adopted Marion Lamson when she was five years old. Again, according to the donor: "After the Brownings adopted Marian...[they] did not adopt other children. They gave Marian piano lessons and she went on to play the organ and piano professionally, to give lessons and to teach music in the Sodus, NY school system. She married Fred O. Scurrah, a Presbyterian minister, and served as organist in the churches he pastored. She was Fred Scurrah's second wife (the first, Celestia Swain, was killed shortly after their marriage) and Marian and Fred had two children, my mother, Mary Catherine (Scurrah) Boewe, born 1921, and Mark Scurrah, now deceased."