My Genealogy Hound

Capt. Joel Brown, postmaster of Edina, was born in York County, Penn., March 8, 1832, and is a son of Thomas and Susannah (Griest) Brown, natives, respectively, of Baltimore, Md., and York County, Penn. The father with his family immigrated to Iowa in 1855, and resided in Van Buren County, until the death of the parents. Our subject was reared on the farm, and at the age of seventeen learned the blacksmith’s trade which he regularly followed in Pennsylvania, until 1855, when he moved with the family to Iowa, where he worked at the same trade in Van Buren County until the breaking out of the civil war, when he enlisted in the spring of 1861, and helped to organize Company H, Fifth Regiment Iowa Volunteer Infantry, of which he was made first lieutenant, and the following September was promoted to the captaincy of the company, serving in this office until the spring of 1863, when he resigned on account of trouble caused by a wound in his lungs, which was received the year previous at Iuka, Miss. Returning home he engaged in the manufacture of wagons, buggies and plows until the spring of 1877, when he removed to Edina, and engaged in the drug business for four years with a brother, in which business he is now engaged, having as a partner Charles E. Lionberger. Capt. Brown comes of an old Whig stock, and since the organization of the Republican party has been a stanch member of its ranks, and has served three terms in the (lower) Iowa Legislature, representing Van Buren County in the Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth General Assemblies. In April, 1883, he was appointed by President Arthur postmaster of Edina, and has filled the office in a faithful and efficient manner up to the present time. His first wife, who was Angelina Griest, died in Van Buren County, Iowa, leaving no issue, and in 1862 he married Sarah Ann McDonald, his present wife, a native of Muskingum County, Ohio, by whom he has one son, Charles M., deputy postmaster. Capt. Brown has long been a Mason, and is a member of the G. A. R. and K. of H. Himself and wife are members of the Presbyterian Church.