William Brown's early education was obtained at the common schools of
the neighborhood where he was born. He was endowed by nature with a
logical mind, a vivid imagination and great practical common sense; and
a memory so tenacious as to enable him to repeat a sermon almost, if not
quite, verbatim, a year after he had heard it delivered. Early in life
he became an exemplary member of the Methodist Church, and was ordained
as a Local Preacher in the Methodist Protestant persuasion, by the Rev.
John G. Wilson, very early in the history of that denomination, in the
old Harmony Church, not far south of Rowlandville. Subsequently he was
admitted to the Conference as a traveling minister and sent to
southeastern Pennsylvania, where he continued to preach the gospel with
much success until his death, which occurred when his daughter Emma was
a child about eight years of age.
Emma's education began on her father's knee, when she was little if any
more than three years old. Before she was four years old she could
repeat Anacreon's Ode to a Grasshopper, which her father had learned
from a quaint old volume of heathen mythology, and taught his little
daughter to repeat, by reciting it aloud to her, as she sat upon his
knee.
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