Abstract
Francis Elizabeth Brown, born in 1818, was the oldest daughter of Thomas Brown, governor of Florida from 1849 to 1853. In the winter of 1827-1828 her father, a dispirited Virginia planter, organized a caravan to move his family from his Rappahannock River farm to Leon County, Florida, some 800 miles away. Brown packed ten year old Lizzie, as Francis Elizabeth was affectionately known, her mother, her brother Jackson, and her three sisters, Mary, Mag, and Ginnie, into the family carriage. Followed by twenty planter friends and his 140 slaves, Brown led the party for two months through North and South Carolina, Georgia, and into Florida. At the time Tallahassee was only a rude village of perhaps 600 or 700 persons. Land had been purchased from the Indians, and the Capital had been officially located only four years earlier. It was here in Leon County that Lizzie was to spend the greater part of her life. She was well educated for those days, and her family was one of the most politically and socially influential in all of antebellum Florida. She was considered to be a great belle. Governor DuVal in 1839 penned a poem “To Miss Lizzy Brown,” and in it he described her brown eyes as “burning with love and constancy.” Some time prior to 1847 the W. H. Geib Company of New York published the “Texas Waltz for the Piano Forte composed and respectfully dedicated to Miss Lizzy Brown,” composed by B. Lignouski, a local Tallahassee music teacher and future college instructor.
Recommended Citation
Groene, Bertram H.
(1969)
"Lizzie Brown's Tallahassee,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 48:
No.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol48/iss2/5
