John Brown and Elizabeth McCrary grew up in Laurens County, South Carolina. They married in 1807, then moved to Indiana. They later returned to the South, and settled in Lawrence County, Alabama. After Elizabeth's death, John Brown (who was an uncle of General Ambrose Burnside) moved to Warren County, Illinois, where he remarried, and spent the rest of his life. John and Elizabeth's descendants included doctors and lawyers, farmers and ranchers, soldiers, bankers, scientists, and engineers. Many bore other surnames-among them Dobbins, Cogdell, Wilson, Dandridge, Otwell, Davidson, and Glenn. They were a varied and mobile family, whose lives were intertwined with many major events of American history-the Gold Rush, the Civil War, the westward movement of the American population, and the nation's transformation from an agrarian and rural to a more industrialized and urban society. This book makes use of a variety of sources, including previously unpublished correspondence, to tell their story.