PA Photos and Documents

This digitized diary of Rebecca Townsend Brown describes time spent accompanying her husband, career army officer Major William H. Brown, during his service with the 18th Infantry in Arizona and Montana in 1879. Rebecca Townsend was born circa 1840 to Washington Townsend and Elizabeth B. Townsend. She married William Harvey Brown (a widower) in July 1868. Their children were Bertha, who was born in 1869 in Tucson and died as an infant; Ethelbert Washington Townsend, who lived from 1870 to 1941; and George Harvey Townsend who died in March 1887 at age four years. William H. Brown died in 1883, and Rebecca T. Brown died in 1890. Both are buried in Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester.

In the diary, Rebecca Brown describes the family’s transfer from a post in Arizona to a yet-to-be-built post in Upper Montana near the Canadian border. Decisions about stages of preparation for the journey including the disposition of possessions and farewells to people are mentioned. Also discussed are the various modes of transportation along the journey (by rail, steamship and overland) and the conditions and challenges of each throughout their travel. Several references are made to concerns about Indians in areas along the way.

After arrival in Montana in May (having left Arizona in April), diary entries for the next five months describe living in tents; the weather, including tornados and thunderstorms; swarms of mosquitoes, the lack of supplies needed to build a post, and the shortage of basic food staples.

By October, Townsend describes the appropriation of funds by Congress and how little of that money makes it to such an outpost, noting the cuts taken by subcontractors. She references the U. S. Postal Service, and also expresses frustration with the government’s lack of support for the post, questioning why they are there.