Johann Stephan Christian Braun married Maria Eva Hamen and immigrated from Germany to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania before 1743. Abraham Brown and Jacob Brown were two of their children. Descendants lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and other midwestern states, California and elsewhere. Includes some ancestors and some of their descendants in Germany.

John Sibley was born around 1597 in England. He and his brother Richard came to Massachusetts in 1629. He married Rachel Leach, the daughter of Lawrence and Elizabeth Leach. John and Rachel had 9 children. John died in 1661, and his widow remarried to Thomas Goldthwaite. Their descendants married into the Brown line. Descendants lived in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Indiana, and elsewhere.

Hinton Rowan Helper (1829--1909) gained notoriety in nineteenth-century America as the author of The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), an antislavery polemic that provoked national public controversy and increased sectional tensions. In his intellectual and cultural biography of Helper -- the first to appear in more than forty years -- David Brown provides a fresh and nuanced portrait of this self-styled reformer, exploring anew Helper's motivation for writing his inflammatory book. Brown places Helper in a perspective that shows how the society in which he lived influenced his thinking, beginning with Helper's upbringing in North Carolina, his move to California at the height of the Californian gold rush, his developing hostility toward nonwhites within the United States, and his publication of The Impending Crisis of the South. Helper's book paints a picture of a region dragged down by the institution of slavery and displays surprising concern for the fate of American slaves. It sold 140,000 copies, perhaps rivaled only by Uncle Tom's Cabin in its impact. The author argues that Helper never wavered in his commitment to the South, though his book's devastating critique made him an outcast there, playing a crucial role in the election of Lincoln and influencing the outbreak of war. As his career progressed after the war, Helper's racial attitudes grew increasingly intolerant. He became involved in various grand pursuits, including a plan to link North and South America by rail, continually seeking a success that would match his earlier fame. But after a series of disappointments, he finally committed suicide. Brown reconsiders the life and career of one of the antebellum South's most controversial and misunderstood figures. Helper was also one of the rare lower-class whites who recorded in detail his economic, political, and social views, thus affording a valuable window into the world of nonslaveholding white southerners on the eve of the Civil War. His critique of slavery provides an important challenge to dominant paradigms stressing consensus among southern whites, and his development into a racist illustrates the power and destructiveness of the prejudice that took hold of the South in the late nineteenth century, as well as the wider developments in American society at the time.

Frederick Griminger (ca. 1760-1786) was descended from the German speaking Grimingers who left central Europe and immigrated to America in the mid-1700's. Frederick's family settled in Rowan County, North Carolina. He married Catherine Lyerly and they had two sons. One son, Christopher (b. 1783) moved to Cabbarus County, North Carolina. The other, Frederick (b. 1785) moved to Lancaster District, South Carolina. Descendants live throughout the United States.

John Phillips was born 7 May 1734 in Cecil County, Maryland. His parents were probably Samuel Phillips and Elizabeth Manadoe Brooks. He served in the American Revolution. He married Margaret McReadon (1748-1812). They had seven children and lived in Rowan County, North Carolina. Descendants and relatives lived mainly in North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky.

During the quarter of a century before the thirteen colonies became a nation, the northwest quadrant of North Carolina had just begun to attract permanent settlers. This seemingly primitive area may not appear to be a likely source for attractive pottery and ornate silverware and furniture, much less for an audience to appreciate these refinements. Yet such crafts were not confined to urban centers, and artisans, like other colonists, were striving to create better lives for themselves as well as to practice their trades. As Johanna Miller Lewis shows in this pivotal study of colonial history and material culture, the growing population of Rowan County required not only blacksmiths, saddlers, and tanners but also a great variety of skilled craftsmen to help raise the standard of living. Rowan County's rapid expansion was in part the result of the planned settlements of the Moravian Church. Because the Moravians maintained careful records, historians have previously credited church artisans with greater skill and more economic awareness than non-church craftsmen. Through meticulous attention to court and private records, deeds, wills, and other sources, Lewis reveals the Moravian failure to keep up with the pace of development occurring elsewhere in the county. Challenging the traditional belief that southern backcountry life was primitive, Lewis shows that many artisans held public office and wielded power in the public sphere. She also examines women weavers and spinsters as an integral part of the population. All artisans—Moravian and non-Moravian, male and female—helped the local market economy expand to include coastal and trans-Atlantic trade. Lewis's book contributes meaningfully to the debate over self-sufficiency and capitalism in rural America.