Olmstead Bishop Brown (1855-1937)

Portrait from the 1930 Nebraska Blue Book.

  Discovered a short while ago via a copy of the Nebraska State Blue Book of 1930, Olmstead Bishop "Bish" Brown was a one-term state representative from Scotts Bluff County who first won election to the legislature in 1928, at the ripe old age of 73. Born in Lake County, Illinois on March 30, 1855, Olmstead B. Brown was one of eight children born to Nelson Olmstead and Elizabeth Ann (Fuller) Brown.**

  While resources on Brown's formative years remain scant, he is noted as having attended the common schools of Illinois, and for the first half of his life rabbited around the United States. After taking up the study of photography, Brown operated in Kenosha, Wisconsin before moving to Chicago, and later resided in Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans.

  By the early 1880s, Brown had settled in Nebraska and married in Osceola County in December 1881 to Carthagenia "Cartha" Marker (1861-1926). The couple's forty-five-year union produced ten children, listed as follows in order of birth: Frank Leroy (1882-1892), Harley Dennis (born 1885), Clarence Earl (died in infancy in 1888), twins Homer James (1889-1892) and Hattie May (1899-1977), Chester Bernard (1891-1939), Beatrice Olive (1895-1990), Rush Gordon (1897-1991), Royal Simeon (1899-1920), and Florence Edith (1905-1996).

  Following his marriage, Brown elected to pursue farming, and he later established a photography studio in Osceola (located in Polk County), prior to removing with his family to Gering, back in Scotts Bluff County. Here Brown would develop a homestead that developed into a farm where he raised "pure blooded Duroc Jersey hogs and Jersey cattle", as well as grain.  

  Brown's residency in Gering saw him as one of the town's school directors and commissioners, and by 1910 he and his family are recorded as residents of Roosevelt in Sioux County (this per the 1910 census). Later the family would settle in Lyman (located in Scotts Bluff County) and Brown was still a resident of that town when he announced his candidacy for the Nebraska House of Representatives. Well into his seventh decade at the time, Brown hoped to represent the 98th legislative district and won the election that November. 

  Little is known of the particular's of Brown's term, which extended from 1929-31. Widowed in 1926, Brown remarried a year into his term to widow Abbie Skinner Biddlecom (1854-1939), to who he was wed until his death. Following the completion of his term Brown and his wife removed to Denver, Colorado, where he died aged 82 on June 1, 1937. He was later removed back to Nebraska for interment at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Morrill. 

**While Findagrave and the Nebraska State Historical Society denote Brown's middle name as Bishop, an alternate middle name for him is recorded in the third volume of Shumway's History of Western Nebraska and Its People--Bishey. This name is believed to be a misspelling of Bishop, or a possible nickname, as Findgrave lists Brown's nickname of "Bish". All in all, very confusing!