By: A. Gail Merian
People connected to well-known figures often have their accomplishments overshadowed, causing their lives to fade into the background. Individuals in this category may include Marion and Francis Brown. Marion was the first wife of Barnum Brown and Frances was their daughter.
Barnum, often referred to as “Mr. Bones”, was a well-known American paleontologist, who in 1902 found the first recorded Tyrannosaurus rex (T. Rex) in the Hell Creek formation in Montana.[1] He started his work with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in 1897 as a field assistant looking for mammal fossils and later joined the dinosaur expedition.[2] Mr. Brown later became the curator of the vertebrae paleontology department, where many of the dinosaurs on display were from his expeditions. In the AMNH Vertebrae Paleontology archives, there are thirteen boxes of his documents and correspondence. Barnum’s expertise was such that he hosted his own weekly CBS radio show.[3]
Marion Brown was born June 11, 1877, the daughter of the Hon. Charles W. and Mary Raymond Brown, of Oxford, New York[4]. She attended Oxford Academy and maintained a grade of 87 in 1886.[5]
But Marion was good at things besides schoolwork. At the twenty-sixth annual fair in Oxford, she won an award of fifteen cents for making wheat bread in the class for under fourteen years of age.[6]
Marion went on to attend Wells College in Aurora, New York, graduating in 1898 with honors[7] and a degree in biology.[8] While studying in Aurora, she volunteered with the local church.
After graduation, Marion got a job teaching at the Fishkill Landing school in Dutchess County. During holidays she would come home to visit her family. On summer vacations from teaching, she even enjoyed an outing with her sister Emily, as when they went to Noyes Beach near Westerly, Rhode Island in 1899.[9]
Marion taught for two years at the Fishkill Landing school, until she received a scholarship in September 1900[10] for a post graduate course at Columbia University in biology, chemistry and education.[11] In June 1901 Marion received her Masters of Arts degree and her diploma from the Teachers College (part of Columbia University).[12] The following year she started teaching as a biology teacher at Erasmus Hall High School, in Brooklyn, where she was popular enough that even after she left, she was often called back as a substitute teacher.[13]
Outside of Marion’s life of teaching, she enjoyed other activities such as visiting the Pan-American Exposition World’s Fair held in Buffalo, New York 1901.[14] In the summer of 1902 Marion went with friends to the Adirondacks and into Canada visiting Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and upon her return found that the Board of Education had extended her position at Erasmus Hall with no time limit.[15]
Marion stayed at a boarding house near Erasmus Hall High School while she was teaching. It is believed that Barnum met his wife while he was a part-time student at Columbia, though Barnum lived at a boarding house owned by Dr. Herman E. Meeker in Manhattan near AMNH.[16] When Barnum took Marion on a date, he would escort her home afterwards to Brooklyn and then take the train back to Manhattan. Unfortunately, he would often fall asleep and wake up back in Brooklyn.[17]
In December 1903, Marion and Barnum visited Marion’s parents in Oxford for the holidays.[18] Shortly afterwards, in January Marion resigned her position at the Erasmus school to be effective January 29, 1904, and returned to Oxford on February 1.[19]
At that time, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brown announced the upcoming wedding of their daughter Marion to Barnum Brown[20] on February 12, 1904, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oxford, New York, where afterward an informal reception was held at the bride’s home. Because it was so cold, Marion wore “…bright red socks over her white satin slippers to keep her feet warm while in the carriage and walking into the church.”[21] She did not realize she had them on until just before she walked down the aisle and kicked them off! Friends talked about the ceremony describing “…Marion’s blond almost ethereal beauty, as a shaft of sunlight through a stained-glass window struck her happy face.”[22]
After the reception, the newlyweds left for their home at 195 Lenox Avenue in New York to wait until early summer, when they intended to go west where Barnum was to continue his work for the AMNH.[23] They delayed their departure in May so that they could attend the wedding of Marion’s sister, Emily, to Rev Charles Boughton.[24]
The couple finally were able to leave for their delayed honeymoon and journeyed west on May 29, 1904, stopping in Indiana to see a nearly complete mammoth skeleton before continuing on to South Dakota where Marion said, “Barnum and I tramped over the Badlands …and located a Plesiosaur skeleton.”[25] Perhaps because of her interest in biology, Marion took note of a yellow-headed blackbird and the smaller white wing blackbirds.[26]
As the couple continued their search for fossils, mother nature was not always nice. Marion, after crossing the pass at Hole in the Wall in Wyoming, describes that on “July 29 a terrific storm came up about 4 A.M with hail. Leroy (a member of the expedition) came into our tent, and he and Barnum tried to hold it up, but it blew over and threw them down into the water, then about 4 inches deep under our cots.”[27] Leroy was soaked and Barnum told him to get into his cot and turned to Marion and said “Now old Girl, if you ever get obstreperous I’ll tell them of the time I saw a man in bed with you.”[28]
“One evening, she (Marion) gave Brown and herself a break from canned food by catching several speckled trout, using a fishhook fashioned from a safety pin, baited with grasshoppers.”[29]
When the couple were in Arkansas, Barnum got into some poison ivy and Marion had to wrap each one of his fingers separately so they would not stick together.[30]
Another story involved a copperhead snake. Marion was waiting for Barnum. As he came into the camp, he saw the snake by Marion. He told her to sit still, and Barnum shot it with one shot.[31] Near the end of their five-month trip, they visited the Petrified Forest in Arizona and Marion collected a horned toad to show to her biology class when she returned.[32]
Figure #1 Photo of Marion Brown at work in Arkansas, 1904. DVP Field Work Collection, VPA 101, Series 3, Box 3, American Museum of Natural History Vertebrate Paleontology Archive. ©AMNHWhen Barnum and Marion returned from their western trip in October 1904, they stopped to see Marion’s mother and father in Oxford before returning to their home in New York.[33]
Marion and Barnum returned to Oxford over the holidays. In 1904 they attended a holiday ball where Barnum was recognized “…as the gentleman with the most distinguished hair.” [34] In 1905, Barnum and Marion came to Oxford, where Barnum gave an “…illustrated lecture on Patagonia, Saturday evening next to St Paul’s chapel” which was sponsored by the Junior Brotherhood of St Andrews to help raise money for a gymnasium.[35]
Barnum said in later years to his daughter that Marion and he had “perfect rapport”, that Marion had a brilliant mind and even though he had a brilliant mind, Marion’s was far better.[36]
In 1906 Barnum wanted to take Marion back on the Hell Creek expedition. However there had been a complaint about men bringing their wives to the field with them. Barnum had argued that it cost the museum nothing and that Marion worked eleven to fourteen-hour days.[37] The Oxford Times issue in June 1906 stated that Marion stopped at her parents in Oxford, before joining her husband in the west in June, suggesting that Marion did go.[38]The first tragedy for the Brown’s was when Barnum and Marion were living in a boarding house in New York and Marion fell down a flight of steps and lost the baby boy she was carrying.[39] However, Marion continued to accompany Barnum for the first three years of their marriage until 1908[40] when in Manhattan, on January 4, 1908, their daughter Frances Brown was born. After Frances’s birth, the Browns moved to Brooklyn near Erasmus Hall and Prospect Park, where Marion hoped to resume her teaching career once Frances was older. In the meantime, she worked as a substitute teacher to prepare for this transition.[41] After Frances’s birth, Barnum, Marion and Frances spent time with Mr. & Mrs. Charles Brown (Marion’s parents) for Christmas in Oxford in 1909.[42]
Marion took Frances for walks in Prospect Park, and it is possible this may be where Marion and Frances contracted scarlet fever in April 1910.[43] Professor Osborne of the AMNH told Barnum to call in any specialists in the country to help, at the museum’s expense.[44] Marion’s mother came to help take care of Marion and Frances, but unfortunately Marion succumbed to the disease in five days.[45] Marion’s funeral had to be delayed because Barnum and Frances were still in quarantine. Afterwards, Barnum buried himself in his work and sent Francis to be raised by her maternal grandparents.[46]
The November[47] and December[48] after Marion’s death, Barnum came to Oxford to see his daughter. Though visiting his daughter infrequently, in 1911 Barnum did see her before leaving for work in Canada.[49] However, Barnum traveled a lot for work and there were times the museum and his family would not hear from him for years.
For example, there was a five-year stretch where Frances did not see him at all as he was working in places such as Samos, Pakistan, India, Burma and Abyssinia.[50] On one of these trips, he was in Mandalay, where he caught malaria and was nursed backed to health by Lillian McLaughlin who became his second wife[51] in 1922.[52] They returned to the US in 1925 and found a letter that Mary Raymond Brown (Marion’s mother) had died. They thought it was time for them to tell Frances that they were married and to have Frances and Charles, Francis’ grandfather, meet Lillian.
As Frances grew up, she attended Oxford Academy and was apparently a good student. In third grade, Frances was on the honor roll with a 91[53] and again in May with a 92.[54] In Frances’s sophomore year she was elected to a committee for the management of Better English Week[55] and in The Oxford-Review Times Frances wrote “When Better English Week comes every patriot and ardent upholder of his country and its beautiful language should use correct English in every speech he makes.”[56]
Frances enjoyed singing and was a member of the Joseph Jefferson Club, where she helped entertain guests in 1921, performing a solo at their annual social event at the home of Mrs. Judd Harrison.[57]
When Frances was fifteen, she traveled with her teacher to New York City and wanted to see her father’s collection at the AMNH. Her grandfather, Charles Brown, wrote to William Matthew, a colleague of Barnum, that Frances was coming to New York, and Matthew said he would be happy to show Frances her father’s museum collection.[58]
Frances wanted to go to a prep school and Lillian, in a letter to her sister, said that Frances had grown up in a town of old aristocrats, who had not had a life most girls had, had just finished her second year of high school and wanted to go to a school in Albany. “…It is a very nice school, also a prep for college, so she should go and get out amongst other girls. The fee is 1000 a year. B(arnum) gives 1000 a year for her support anyway and she might as well be where she is happy. She did not like the idea of her daddy getting married, but she’ll get used to it when we get to know each other better.”[59] Frances went on to attend and graduate from the St. Agnes School in Albany, New York, a private school for girls.[60]
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Frances also went to Wells College in Aurora where she received her B.A. degree with honors in English [61] and later her master’s degree from Chicago University.[62] While attending Wells College, Frances represented the college at the meeting of the National Studies Volunteer Association in Detroit, Michigan and later spent the holidays in Buffalo, New York.[63] Eventually she took additional graduate classes at Oxford, UK and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[64]
While Frances was attending college, she would occasionally visit Barnum and Lillian in the city, where they would attend theaters and concerts. [65]
In 1931 Frances accepted a position at a private all-girls school in Baltimore, Maryland[66] (probably the Hannah Moore Academy in Reisterstown, Maryland) as an English teacher.[67] While there, she continued her interest in singing and earned a “…teacher’s certificate in voice from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore”[68] and performed as a soprano in the summer school concert given by the Peabody Conservatory of Music and John Hopkins University in 1932.[69] In 1936 Frances returned to Oxford and sang some vocal selections to the Silver Tea given by the Congregational Women at the home of Mrs. Lester Cooper.[70]
Unfortunately, while teaching at Reisterstown, Francis fell ill with appendicitis and had to be hospitalized in Baltimore,[71] but did resume teaching when she recovered. In September 1942, Frances left the Hannah Moore Academy to become dean of Mary Lyon Junior College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.[72] Then Frances served in the English department of Arlington Hall Junior College, Washington, D.C. until it closed to be used by the military in WWII.[73]
“During the war (WWII) Miss Brown did editorial work for the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C.[74] At this time, Barnum came to Washington to work with the Office of Strategic Services that was working on the probable invasion routes of Europe. He had no place to live. At the same time, Frances was living in a downtown apartment with a friend who had to leave the city to attend to her ill mother and so Frances offered her father a place to stay. This was the only time that Frances and her father lived together, along with a cat called “Little Joe Big Stink.”[75] Frances and her father taught the cat to retrieve like a dog.
Father and daughter attended parties, concerts, etc. until they met a lady “Brunnhilde.”[76] After that, Frances was an interloper. Frances was aware that her father had affairs with women, but her concern was that “Brunhilde” was a Nazi spy.[77] Frances was relieved when the woman was recalled to Germany.
After the war, Frances went back to teaching.
In 1948 Miss Brown was appointed President of Chevy Chase, Junior College in Washington, D.C. where she had been acting president of the college and the academic dean for three years prior.[78]
Figure #2 Frances Brown Courtesy Chevy Chase Historical SocietyIn 1951, Frances went to Guatemala when her father was working there. Barnum and Frances went sightseeing to visit the Copan Mayan ruins. Frances mentioned that a “lively” revolution was taking place when their plane arrived and they were greeted by guards. They were told they had to be jailed and the plane confiscated. However, they were still permitted to explore the ruins while the guards looked for a jail. On their return, “It seemed there were insufficient jail facilities for such a large group!”[79] During the same trip, Barnum arranged for a friend with a plane to take them to visit rubber plantations. Frances had to sit on “…either a very large coffin or some cartons of canned goods.”[80] Then Barnum wanted to know if “…she would like him to get her a macaw or monkey to take back to her board of trustees”[81] at the college which she was head of. France’s journey was interrupted by a storm and heavy flooding, making it impossible to move forward. The villagers said they had a fine hotel to stay at which turned out to be just a humble village dwelling. Frances said there were so many bed bugs that kept biting her, that she stayed up all night walking or sitting on the riverbank.[82] Upon her return, Frances “…as President she came dressed… in a total Guatemalan outfit including the shoes…”[83] Unfortunately, the college closed in 1950 and Frances said that the Board of Trustees reported it was due to “…low enrollment, rising costs, and uncertainty of the international situation”[84] the latter being the Korean War.[85]
When Chevy Chase closed, Frances worked as executive director of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) before becoming dean in 1953 of the Pine Manor Junior College.[86]
From 1957[87] to 1959, Frances was Dean of Women at Radcliffe College.[88] In 1961 she joined Longwood College and retired from there in 1973.[89]
Figure #3 Assistant Dean of Women Miss Frances R Brown Longwood College 1966 Yearbook page 17 U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016 – Ancestry.com Accessed January 11, 2026.In an interview in 1988 Frances said that she had married and had a daughter. Unfortunately, her daughter died of pneumonia and her husband in a car accident, not long afterwards.[90] In this interview she did not name them or when these events occurred.
Barnum was asked to supervise the construction of nine life-size dinosaurs for a display at the 1964 World’s Fair and Frances accompanied him while he worked.[91] Unfortunately, Barnum died in 1963, before the exhibit opened.[92] Frances remembered “… his gleeful speculation about the probable reactions of onlookers when the dinosaurs were eventually floated down the Hudson River to the fair site.” [93]Frances passed away in Norfolk, Virgina in1998.[94] She was buried in Riverview Cemetery, Oxford, New York next to her father and mother.
Figure #4 Barnum Brown – Riverview Cemetery in Oxford, New York, Upper-Level Section G Lot 15. Photo courtesy of Dale & Tina Utter.
Figure #5 Marion and Frances Brown – Riverview Cemetery in Oxford, New York, Upper-Level Section G Lot 15. Photo by Shane B. https://www.findagrave.com;Marion and Frances both had private lives. Their stories have been pieced together through historical records, books, and news clippings. Their lives were shaped by personal aspirations, and professional achievements. While less is known of Marion, she still managed to pursue her educational training, start a family and pursue work with her husband. Frances appeared to follow in her mother’s footsteps, going into education and achieving numerous professional accomplishments. Frances’ life may have been less stressful if her mother had lived, for living with her grandparents -an older generation- as well as dealing with her father’s long absences may have been difficult. However, history records two women who still managed to contribute to the world around them.
If you’re interested in the Hell Creek area where the Browns worked, you can visit the Hell Creek Museum in South Dakota. It offers educational programs with 3D displays, audiovisual stations, interactive exhibits, and touchable fossils. Dinosaurs of the Hell Creek Museum | Belle Fourche, SD.[95] Many of the fossils that Barnum found are on display at AMNH. However, the T-Rex found by Barnum Brown was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the 1940s.
I would like to thank Diane Branham Executive Director Oxford Historical Society, Julie Kupris Historical Research Assistant, Vickie House, Oxford Town Historian, Tina and Dale Utter, and Kay Benjamin for their help.