Pike County Missouri Obituaries

Obituary from The Bowling Green Times,
Bowling Green, MO
January 26, 1888

Nancy Brandon

A special from Louisiana, Mo. dated Jan. 23d says: "Mrs. Nancy Brandon of this city died at her home this morning. She had the distinction of being the oldest settler in Pike county. Her maiden name was Nancy McConnell and she was the daughter of Wm. McConnell, a soldier in the Revolutionary war. She was born in Woodford county, Kentucky, on the 16th of May, 1793, and was consequently 94 years and eight months old. Her parents removed to this county when it was embraced in the limits of St. Charles. They came as early as 1810 and made up one of the nineteen families that went into the old Buffalo fort, two miles south of this city, to protect them selves from the Indians during the war of 1812. In this fort she was married to Peter Brandon, a soldier of that war, and a private in Capt. Thomas Hamilton's company, United States infantry, who was then encamped in the fort to protect the settlers from the tomahawks of the savages. Her husband died about forty years ago, and she has, since April 1878, been drawing a pension on account of her husband's service in the war of 1812. Her daughter, Mrs. Letha Woods, took the prize, a silver cup, at the old settlers reunion at Bowling Green in 1883, for being the first child born in Pike county. Mrs. Brandon's descendants numbered four generations, and at the time of her death was mother, grandmother, great grandmother and great, great grandmother. She had always been an active and energetic woman and retained her faculties to the last, and her death was the result of old age."

Notes from contributor, Bowen R.:
Obtained from Micro film rolls at the State Historical Society of Missouri, at Columbia, Mo. by Daryl Ann Rogers. Submitted by Bowen A. Rogers, her father, with his added commentary:
**In Nancy Brandon's pension application, she states "her husband died at St. Louis, Mo. on the 11th day of January, 1828 as well as she can remember". Therefore, Peter Brandon died sixty years before Nancy instead of forty years as stated in the newspaper article.
**The daughter, named as Mrs. Letha Woods, was actually Relief McConnell Wood, and Letha apparently an alternate name not used in documents or histories. Relief was born 8 March, 1811 about one year before Buffalo Fort constructed, and not born in the Fort, as has been reported in another article. She married Spencer Wood 18 May, 1832 as Relief McConnell. The 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 Federal censuses all show her name as "Relief". She died 5 August,1896 and she and her mother both buried in the Mt. Zion Cemetery. The father of Relief is not known. After Nancy's marriage to Peter Brandon, she had another daughter and six sons.
**This newspaper article reproduced as originally printed and several words not capitalized as would have been proper.