Ancestry

The end pages of an old French prayer book, laboriously filled with dry names and dates of long-gone relatives.  This belonged to my great great grandmother, Therèse Euphrosyne Calas Serre.  (She was born in France in 1788 and died in New York in 1875).

A much more colourful and interesting member of the family tree was my great great uncle Clark Dean Brown.  He was born in Mapleton, Minnesota in 1867, and here is a description of his fascinating life taken from reminiscences written by my uncle some years ago:

"Clark Brown was undoubtedly the most colorful relative I have ever known.  Even in advanced age, as I recall him, he was lean, dark, of fair height, ramrod straight, with sparkling brown eyes, and a flashing smile.  His life was built of escapades.  By running away from home on a couple of occasions he saw a lot of the old West in the 70’s and 80’s and developed his talent for gambling, particularly poker.  Once he telegraphed his father from Montana for money for a ticket back to Mapleton saying, 'Out here they’d as soon shoot you as look at you.'  When Jim, or it may have been Frank Younger, one of the famous Younger brothers who rode with the James boys, was released from Minnesota’s Stillwater Penitentiary, after pulling twenty years for his part in the Northfield raid, Uncle Clark, always the promoter, gave him a job as doorman in one of the Mankato theatres he owned in the late ’90’s.  Naturally Younger became quite an attraction.  People drove for miles to see him.  In 1898 Uncle Clark joined the army for the Spanish-American war but missed Cuba.  At a moment’s notice in 1904, when in Portland on business, he signed on the French full-rigged ship, Vercingetorix for a 143 day voyage to England as an ordinary seaman.  Here is a comment of his on rounding the Horn which I culled from a long letter of his to the Mapleton newspaper:

'As we drove southward into the ‘roaring forties’ as the stretch from 40 to 50 degrees south latitude is called, it gradually grew colder.  The climatic conditions being just the reverse of those in the northern hemisphere, we found ourselves approaching an Antarctic winter, or I might more properly say the beginning of that season.  The North Star had long disappeared and in its place we watched each night the rise of the Southern Cross until as we neared the Horn it appeared nearly over our mastheads.  Magellan’s Clouds took the place of the Milky Way.  It became too cold to work on deck, but we had no snow or hail.  We lay hove to under low topsails for nearly three weeks waiting for a favorable slant but that was a mere incident.  Westbound vessels frequently beat about for months in vain to effect the passage and then would have to run for the Cape of Good Hope.  Even with us the waves ran frightfully high, pitching our craft about like an empty barrel.  We had to lash every moveable thing down.  Holes were bored through the mess room table and pegs stuck around the dishes to keep them from escaping.  It was often folly to walk on deck.  Tons of water came over the weather rail and formed miniature Niagaras between the forecastle head and the break in the poop.  Once I was caught napping and washed headlong into the lee scuppers by a tremendous sea.  We did not lose any of our men overboard, although such occurrences are not unusual; not infrequently a whole watch of ten or a dozen men is lost when some gigantic comber strikes them unawares.  Scores of seamen perish miserably at Cape Horn every year, and all that the world learns of the loss is through a scant line in the marine column of some newspaper.  Ships suffer too, so it will be a glorious day when the Panama Canal is thrown open to traffic ...'


Prior to 1914 he was a manager of the Hagenbach Wild Animal Show in Europe for several years.  Later he made and lost a fortune in Keith-Orpheum theatre stock.  He was a devoted high stakes poker player who participated in big games all through the West.  The last time I saw him in 1946 I asked him, “Uncle Clark, after sixty years of poker are you ahead or behind?”  He thought for a moment, then replied, “I am not really certain but it’s not more than seventy five dollars either way.”