How Many Hopes Lie Buried Here
June 4th, 2021
Mable, Teresa and Jannette Brown, 1911
(F.2016.2.2.10.5 Eric Brown Fonds, The Brown Homestead Archive and Research Centre)
History often speaks in surprising ways.
This simple letter from William Edward Brown to his niece Mable speaks to kindness and familial love in a way that touches on our shared human experience.
That becomes more poignant when we learn that William - always a doting uncle and always a teacher, the letter shows us - died of consumption (tuberculosis) a few months later. He was 27 years old. He was at the beginning of his life.
His sad fate was common for his time. It is remarkable to us today only because we have lived for a long time largely free of tuberculosis and many other diseases that ravaged humanity for centuries. They killed millions every year, many of them younger than William, sometimes entire families in a matter of weeks or months.
COVID-19 is a whisper, reminding us how different things used to be not so long ago and what it is like to witness families and communities become devastated by disease.
The relative freedom from such devastating plagues in our lifetimes is unprecedented in human history and we enjoy it primarily by virtue of the discovery of antibiotics and the creation of vaccines. We have more reason than ever to truly appreciate these two great miracles of science.
The current pandemic reminded us of William’s letter. So, we took it from our archive and read it again. Doing so, we wonder what he would think if he knew that so many of us today choose not to avail ourselves of a salvation that was unavailable to him.
Vaccines save lives.
This is not an opinion or a political statement. It is a historical fact. History often shows us the way forward … if we choose to listen.
“How Many Hopes Lie Buried Here”
inscription on William E Brown’s headstone
Mable Catherine Brown became a nurse and worked at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan.
Many of the patients she cared for suffered from consumption.
Mable Catherine Brown in 1919
(F.2016.2.2.17.1 Eric Brown Fonds, The Brown Homestead Archive and Research Centre)
William E. Brown Obituaries
Above - F.2016.2.2.3.3 | Left - F.2016.2.2.3.2
Eric Brown Fonds, The Brown Homestead Archive and Research Centre