Historical Essays
Post date: Dec 20, 2017 2:24:43 AM
The history of Brownstown.
Brownstown, one of the first European settlement
communities in the early Michigan territory.
Michigan got it's name from the Native American word "meicigama" (meaning "great water," a word referring to Lake Superior).
Michigan Territory formed August 15, 1796
Michigan was covered by ice 12,500 years ago
Michigan was inhabited about 12,500 years ago, about the time of the end of the last ice age; this is assumed by discovery of "Clovis" Culture Artifacts.
Michigan became a state, January 26 1837.
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Brownstown Township got its name from Adam Brown, tribal leader of a Native American village located on Brownstown Creek in what is now the City of Gibraltar Michigan.
Carpenter’s Fort West Virginia, 1754. Wyandot and Mingo warriors kidnapped Adam Brown , his younger brother Samuel and young Nicholas Carpenter. Samuel was brought home in 1769 and Nicholas Carpenter came home about 1779. Adam Brown remained in the company of the native American tribes. *1
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Adam Brown became the tribal leader of the group that occupied the village and it was then known as Brown’s town.
In 1811 Adam Brown was granted three parcels of land. (640 acres or 1 square mile each) in the area occupied by the village and what is now the City of Gibraltar. *2
Adam and his wife and children moved across the Detroit River to Amhurstburg in about 1813.
He and his widow sold the land parcels to Territorial Gov. Louis Cass and Gabriel Godfroy between the years of 1815 and 1836. *3
Land records and other source material are on file with the Brownstown Historical Society. *4
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ÌTa-hou-ne-ha-wie-tie / Adam Brown [born c.1747 in Virginia; died c.1823 probably at Amherstburg], Euro-American child, captured at the age of 8 in Virginia in 1755, adopted into the ruling Deer clan at the Huron village near Detroit, raised on the East shore of the Detroit River opposite Fort Malden, lived at Brownstown [named after him] on the road from Detroit to the Ohio country, Adam Brown became a chief and was named Ta-haw- na-haw-wie-te, he married a Wyandot [maternal grandmother of Peter Dooyentate Clarke], grandfather of Peter Dooyentate Clarke; his Virginia family offered him a part of his father's estate if he would return home, but he chose to remain with the Wyandots; he opposed attacks on whites; Skah-on-wot /
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Adam Brown, Wyandot chief, invited the Quakers to Upper Sandusky in 1789; Ta-hou-ne-ha- wie-tie, Huron chief, attended a council at Detroit on May 19, 1790, where he signed Surrender #2 [with an Antler totem], south side of Askunessippi [Thames River] from Port Bruce to Windsor;
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Joseph Brant met Mr. Adam Brown at the Huron Village around September 28, 1794; Brown attended a council at Brownstown,
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Ta-hou-ne-ha- wie-tie proposed to move to land adjacent to Malden with most of his village in 1796;
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on January 22, 1796, McKee reported that Adam Brown was away from Brownstown with most of the Wyandot chiefs, and that he wasn't expected back until the spring of 1797;
on April 9, 1797, Chew wrote "Chief Brown is a Person of much consequence with the Indians... he has always been a faithful and firm friend to the British";
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Adam Brown, his daughters and grandchildren, retreated in a barge up the Thames River with Proctor's and Tecumseh's forces in 1813, they were overtaken by US cavalry; after the Battle of the Thames they were taken back to Detroit and released;
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Adam Brown, Wyandot/Huron chief, signed: Surrender #42, part of the Huron Reserve, February 2, 1836, and Surrender #46, part of the Huron Reserve, September 20, 1836;
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Adam Brown was mentioned in Ironside's report, August 31, 1840 (PAC RG10 vol. 1840 IT 002; PAC RG10 ser. II vol. 13; Canada 1847, no 19; Canada 1891 vol. I: 1, 42, 113; Blair vol. II: 167; Clarke: 38-39, 53, 66-67, 72-73, 115-116; Cruikshank vol. III: 78, 106, 183, 204, vol. IV: 44, 62-63; Leighton: app. B4; Tanner: 102; MPHSC vol. XX: 470-472, 501, 512, vol. XXV: 63-64; OAHS vol. XIV: 314). Friend: I received your letter you wrote me and I am very sorry for your doing as sent them Warriors to General Wayne without the consent of the Chiefs and all the Indian Warriors. You may think yourselves that you did right, but you did wrong, we see plainly that you will bring them poor people into a Scrape of your doings...'- letter to US sympathizer Isaac Williams from Brownstown, December 3, 1794 (Cruikshank vol. III: 204).
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*1 Chronicles of Border Warfare. A S Withers P 96,97
*2 US land Records
*3 Property abstract. BHS
*4 Deeds Nations by Greg Curnoe (adamsheritage.com)