Sarah Elizabeth Browning, eldest child and only daughter of Robert Browning and Mary Ann (Reddy), was born October 16, 1858, in Matunuck, town of South Kingston, Rhode Island, in the home which had been in her family since 1758, when her great great grandfather, Thomas Browning, bought it and 260 acres from Thomas Hazard. (Thomas Browning's mother was Ann Hazard.) It was a two-family house and was occupied by mother's father (Robert VII) and his brother Thomas at that time. Their father was then operating another of his farms, known as the Underwood Farm, near Wolf Rocks and Kingston Hill. When she was a small child, her father took over the Underwood Farm, as his father's health was failing, and her grandfather occupied the homestead with mother's Uncle Thomas. Her grandfather's sister. Aunt Mary Larkin, had been living at the Underwood Farm and lived there with them the rest of her life. Mother remembered her affectionately as one who gave her religious instruction and taught her to sing old hymns. Robert inherited the Underwood farm, and his brother Thomas the Matunuck homestead, which now is owned by Thomas' grandson, Harold Browning, whose son now lives there and operates the farm. The house has been remodeled from time to time, but much of the original house has been retained.

After the death of his parents and aunt, mother's father sold the Underwood Farm and acquired the farm on the corner of the Post Road (U. S Route 1) and the Matunuck Beach Road, reaching back to Potter Pond (salt pond), where he and grandmother lived the rest of their lives, near the old family home. Mother's grandfather (Robert VI) was one of eleven children and grew up in Hopkinton on another family farm. Her great grandfather (Robert V) owned five farms: the three mentioned above, one in North Kingston, and one on Browning Hill near Hope Valley. When he lived in the Matunuck homestead, he hired a teacher for his children. (Mother was born in the former school room.) He was a soldier in the Revolution. His wife was an Alien, and the Allens were Quakers. Mother was not sure whether the Brownings had been Quakers before this time. It was his father (Thomas IV) who bought the homestead from Thomas Hazard.

The Matunuck farm where mother grew up was very pleasantly located on the plain between the ocean and the rocky, wooded hills where city people had summer residences. The seashore farmers had wood lots in the hills' and some piped water from the ponds there. Their nearest neighbor across the Post Road was summer resident, Edward Everett Hale, pastor of the South Congregational Church of Boston;, chaplain of the U. S. Senate, author of "The Man Without a Country" (which I read in ninth grade English) and a humorous book "My Double and How He Undid Me." Mrs Hale was in poor health and apparently did not care much for the summer place. His sister, Susan Hales traveller and writer, loved the place and kept it open for his family every summer. My grandfather and uncles worked for them at times, supplying them with carriages and farm products. When the Rev. Hale was teaching his children of mother's approximate age, mother could join their classes, or listen in. The Hales gave the community a library, built on their grounds, of which my aunt was librarian for several years.

When mother finished the district school (equivalent to tenth or eleventh grade;, probably), she went for a year to the Friends' School, Providence (later, Moses Brown School). Her brothers also went there. She supplemented this schooling by private study in history;) literature, and music. She had a beautiful and powerful high soprano voice and played the organ. We sang together as a family a great deal, and she taught my sisters and me to play to accompany singing. I have written some of the old hymns she sang, as I remember them. Mother had several health problems, and was never very strong physically, but she accomplished a great deal of work through organizing children's work to supplement her own. She was an exceptionally good manager. After father gave up medicine to develop his inventions, she worked away from home much of the time, but was always with us weekends; then, as a team, we did the week's cleaning, laundry, and cooking under her direction.

Although she did not withdraw from the Quakers, she was a strict observer of Seventh Day Baptist views, which she accepted after she married. She brought us up to be Seventh Day Baptists, but doubtless Quaker ideas would have been included in her teaching. Her life was full of good works. She was always ready to lend a helping hand to those in trouble and share what she had with those who had less. She liked people and enjoyed visiting and entertaining. She liked cooking, especially baking, for which she received prizes at local fairs. She also took pleasure in gardening, flower arranging, and art needlework. She loved children and animals. After her step-children, children, and grandchildren were grown, she took several foster children and also contributed to the support of war orphans, I remember her as kind and gentle, though firm, cheerful, optimistic, altruistic, sociable, sympathetic, devout, and a brilliant conversationalist.

Her mother was more quiet and reserved than she was. She also loved music and flowers. I remember her as pretty even in old age, with dark wavy hair and big blue eyes. Grandmother's mother lived with her when I visited them as a child. Although mother's grandmother was in her 90's and confined to a wheel chair because of broken hip, her mind was still good, and she appeared to still enjoy life. She entertained us children with such devices as telling fortunes in tea leaves. I don't remember mother's father but have heard a great deal about him from my older brothers and sisters. I have the impression he was jovial, in spite of the fact he had poor health most of his life. In the preface to "Letters of Susan Hale," E.E Hale, Jr., writes that Susan "got horses of Robert Browning, to whom she was much attracted by his singular strain of almost saturnine humour." Susan refers to him several times in her letters as furnishing services and quotes conversations with him which she found interesting or entertaining. Nancy Hale, author of "A New England Girlhood" in an interview quoted in the yearbook of South County, I960, said, "My Aunt Susan's special friend and admirer was Mr. Browning, he of the long prophetic beard, the Yankee ingenuity at fixing anything at all, of the unforgettable twang. . . " He entertained his grandchildren with folk-songs. I have written excerpts from two I have never seen or heard elsewhere. He was hospitable to strangers and people less fortunate than he. Besides goods and services sold to summer residents, his principal cash crop was turkeys. He was said to be quite successful in trading.

The preceding was written by Hannah Amelia Stillman Bradfield in FAMILY HISTORY OF HANNAH STILLMAN (MRS. RICHARD) BRADFIELD dated November 1, 1963 - edited for this page

FAMILY HISTORY OF HANNAH STILLMAN (MRS. RICHARD) BRADFIELD dated November 1, 1963 has been provided by William M. Morgan of Washington, USA