Mabe Family of Brown County

I'm featuring a family from my area in Brown County. I like to look at other family genealogies in my township to help me get to know the people and the community. For our featured family I picked a photo from our Archives of three children: Mary, Harriet, and Lemmon Mabe. The photo of the children is above. There is some family history that has been done on this family. So I was able to find out a little more information on the family. I went on Heritage Quest and found the family in the 1860 census in Van Buren township, Brown County, Indiana. There on page 31 was the family: William, wife Elizabeth, Mary, Harriet, and Lemmon Mabe. Lemmon/Leamon being an unusual name as well as Mabe it was easy to find the family.



From our known family histories I found William Franklin Mabe was born Dec. 8, 1825 in Stokes Co., NC. He died July 25, 1911. His wife was Elizabeth M. Clark, born Aug. 19, 1825 in Ohio. She died July 25, 1904. They're both buried at Mt. Zion Cemetery. They were married Aug. 10, 1848 in Brown County. Their children were: Mary, James Herod, Harriet Jane, and Leamon Martin Mabe.

About twice a month I'm asked to help contribute a photo from the Archives for our local newspaper. Another member does the write up for the article. Our newspaper, the Brown County Democrat, has given us about a 1/4 page to devote to Historical Society news. We have a great little local newspaper - lots of community news. Since I'm a member also of our Genealogical Society this month I'm trying to promote our subscription to Heritage Quest that we provide for our community through our local library. We've compared usage information from 2007 to last year and found that the numbers are almost half what they used to be. I don't know if the economy has made people cut back on doing their genealogy, but I want them to know that this is a free resource that they can use. As long as our Genealogical Society can afford to keep providing this to our community we want our county residents to know that it is there for them to use at no charge.

Whenever you use a free resource consider all the volunteers or organizations that have donated their time to provide these free resources for your use. If it is a local organization please thank them. Better yet, get involved and help out.