Black female, born 18 October 1936 in Pensacola, Florida. She was the daughter of Eva Brown and an unknown father (Eva probably knew very well who the father was, but a young woman in her circumstances would have had her reasons for not identifying him). She was accidentally suffocated at a week old on 24 October 1936, at her mother’s home at 618 N. A Street in Pensacola. The informant on the death certificate was Eva’s mother, Roxie Brown, living at the same address. W.H. Pickett, the physician who signed the death certificate, examined the child after its death. The infant was buried the same day it died in the Escambia County Poor Farm by Morris Funeral Home.
Eva Brown was the younger sister of Annie Brown Pate, and much of her life coincided with Annie’s as they lived in the same household until about 1948. Eva’s life, however is far less documented. She was born in Selma, AL in about 1916. She completed one year of high school, and worked as a domestic from a young age.
Eva’s story separated from Annie’s by the time of the 1950 census, when she lived as the head of her own household at 203 Lloyd St. in Pensacola. She was working as a maid in a private household. She was identified as a widow, though I have never found any evidence that she was married. She had two children: Joyce L. Wilson, born in 1935, and James Taylor Quarrells, born 1941. The infant she lost would have come the year after Joyce was born.
I have not yet found a record of Eva’s death; however, she was listed in her mother’s 1972 obituary, and her brother Pollard’s 1997 obituary, as living in New York. She was not listed among her sister Annie’s surviving family in 2007, so one presumes she passed away before then.
FAMILY:
Mother: Eva Brown
Father: Unknown
Siblings: Joyce L. Wilson, James Taylor Quarrells
Grandparents: Roxie Anna Miller and Pollard Brown
Great-grandparents: Caroline Pettiway; Mary Johnson and Remus Brown
SOURCES:
Florida Certificate of Death for the Infant of Eva Brown (No. 17128), Florida Deaths, 1877-1939. Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 14 June 2016. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Household of Eva Brown, United States of America, Bureau of the Census; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007; Record Group Number: 29; Residence Date: 1950; Home in 1950: Pensacola, Escambia, Florida; Roll: 3530; Sheet Number: 77; Enumeration District: 17-12
Obituary of Pollard Brown, Jr. The Pensacola News Journal, 26 JAN 1997, p. 22.
Obituary of Annie Brown Pate, The Pensacola News Journal, 27 MAR 2007, p. 17.
For additional sources on this family, see the Infant Son of Annie Brown, here.