Blair County PA Archives Biographies.....Brown, Joseph Terrence (Big Joe) ???? -
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Judy Banja http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00004.html#0000757 July 19, 2025, 7:36 pm
Source: Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches, Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911
Author: J. N. Tillard
Eventful Life of
JOSEPH BROWN
Veteran of Civil War and Pennsylvania Railroad Company Defied Wounds,
Accidents and Physical Hardship - Social Leader in His Younger Days
THERE is no more conspicuous figure in the ranks of the Union Veteran Legion
in the days when they turn out to bid a last farewell to a comrade who has
obeyed the summons of the Great Commander, than Joseph T. Brown of the East
end. His gigantic frame, leading the depleted column of world-worn and weary
men who nearly a half century ago marched so blithely to the rescue of our
imperiled liberties, always attracts attention.
Wounds, railroad accidents and other physical hardships that would long ago
have put most men out of the running have been unable to conquer that strong
spirit and splendid physique. Though badly battered, he is still in the ring
and ids fair to stay there for many years yet.
One spring day in the early sixties, while riding a raft of longs down the
turbulent water of the Susquehanna, after having spent the previous winter in
cutting and dragging them to the banks of the Clearfield Creek, he heard that
Fort Sumter had been fired upon. Dropping pike pole and peevy, he picked up
the musket and started south. In the course of his marches he got quite a
long way south.
After many vicissitudes, he found himself, one hot Fourth of July morning,
celebrating the Declaration of Independence at Pocotaligo, South Carolina. It
was a very busy day with the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania. They had made up
their minds to celebrate by planting "Old Glory" on the ramparts of Fort
Wagner. Some enthusiastic, if misguided, gentlemen behind the aforesaid
ramparts strenuously objected to any such proceeding. They were celebrating
themselves, and were not using Chinese crackers either. They were firing all
sorts of projectiles at the devoted Seventy-sixth. Joe stopped one of them,
or, to be more accurate, the projectile stopped Joe. It went clear through
his thighs and, finding his powers of locomotion seriously interfered with,
he lay down in the hot sands to rest. He lay there until hostilities had
ceased, when a squad of Confederates picked him up, laid him on the sun-
heated pitch pine deck of a boat and sent him to Belle Isle to recuperate.
After nine more months of the sort of treatment provided in a Confederate
prison, the wound healed, but it is safe to say that he had not taken on any
superfluous flesh. When paroled from the prison, he came home to get
something to eat and then went back to see it out. After Richmond had fallen
and Lee surrendered, finding the steering of rafts a little tame, he became a
brakeman on the mountain division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
He got jolted off his train in the Alleghany tunnel, fell over a bride or
two and got his bumps generally. Tiring of such activities, he found
employment in the Altoona car shops, where he, by and by, became foreman of
the metal yard. Several years ago he was relieved of his active
responsibilities and now find leisure to discuss the incidents of his active
and adventurous life, sitting under his own vine and fig tree at his pleasant
residence on Pottsgrove Avenue.
Here he sits reviewing the past with the few remaining cronies of his
youth. The Tuckahoe boys who went with him into the fierce conflict of the
sixties were not all mustered out. The fact is that the majority of them
were not. On a hundred battlefields their bones are bleaching, and these
include two of his brothers. But his reminiscences are not all sad. In the
days after the war, "Big Joe" was the leader in most social events in the
neighborhood. He called the figures at the country dances and bossed the job
at religious revivals. The bad man from the ridges who came for the purpose
of breaking up the meeting frequently found himself thrown out bodily, for
Joe had a way of taking snap judgment with an offender that was very
effective. Life with him was too short for temporizing methods. To quote his
own words, he "would either make a spoon, or spoil a horn."
He has always been a keen student of events, and there is yet no matter of
either local or general importance in which he does not take a lively
interest. Well informed on all current questions, he is always an interesting
talker and agreeable companion. Believing in the doctrine of the Republican
party, he has always been a staunch defender of its policies and has been
active in the organization. He has served the county as jury commissioner and
has been a prominent candidate for sheriff.
With a record of patriotic service to his country's needs surpassed by
none, and a life behind him of probity and honest endeavor in civil life, he
can sit surrounded by his children and children's children, satisfied with a
review of the past and content with the prospects for the future. May his
evening time be light.
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