A Discovery From The Family Archives

Over the Christmas holiday, Dana and I brought out the family Bible and a stack of papers filled with background on one branch of my family tree: the Brownings. All of us love family lore, but Dana is especially enthralled with family history. We had a lot of fun reading the various notes and letters, some of which had some truly interesting tidbits about our ancestors.

My full name is David Browning Barnes. I was named after David Milton Browning, my great grandfather, or more specifically my father's maternal grandfather. The Browning clan is made up of rugged individuals, and David was a prime example.

Another example is my earliest American ancestor, William Browning. Born in England in 1586, he landed in Virginia near the mouth of the James river in... get this... 1619! This was a year before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Side note: one branch of Trudi's family tree has been in America far longer than that... the Cherokees!) Needless to say, forging a life under those conditions took some guts. William evidently made a good go of it; he was an active member of the Jamestown colony and owned 650 acres of land. Here's a photo of the Jamestown colony today.

The Brownings were part of the westward migration in the 19th century. A number of them were Mormons who settled in Utah, among them John Browning, the famous gunmaker. I'll tell you about an interesting story about the link between the Brownings and the Mormons soon.