Thank you very much for all this!

I had found the Tulare county biography of Tom Brown and Cornelia Glass and Mrs. Brown's indian story is what put me on the track to look at Lamar and the expedition of 1853. It appears our Mary married the elder George Balaam in late 1869 (who also came over in 1853) but left him shortly thereafter. According to a Balaam genealogy book I found in the Sutro Library he divorced her in Oct 1871. She also had her first child (that we know of) with John Harvey Lee, her 2nd(?) husband in Lone Pine, CA at that time. My wife descends from Mary and Joseph C. Lee (Mary's 3rd husband).

With all the intermixing of the Glass, Balaam and Brown families (and Ownby apparently - Mr. Ownby is the one who shot at the indian who was trying to steal young Cornelia Glass), it seems clear there is a connection somewhere to our Mary's Brown family. There was a Brown family that came in that caravan (or, at least, came in 1853 from Lamar) that consisted of Wm. H & Eliza Brown (born in NC & OH respectively) and their children, Margaret A, Permelia Ellen, Electa, and Mary H (A?). This Mary is 1 year old in 1850 (in Lamar Co.) and that matches our information about my wife's Mary Ann Brown pretty closely. I have not been able to get very far with this family yet though. The parents had disappeared by 1860, and Mary's sisters Margaret and Permelia married Californians in the Tulare and Tejon areas.

I would very much like to find out more about the families that were on that expedition and see if there are any memoirs or diaries that describe the journey. It's not clear to me (yet) whether there was more than one caravan from Lamar in 1853 - or if this one was particularly large or noteworthy. I see that Jane Wilson, who was famously captured by indians, was also part of a caravan from Lamar in 1853. It sounds like this trip was not very safe in those days!

Thank you again for posting all that information! It was very kind of you!

Don & Carley Worth