Pueblo County, Colorado
Margaret J. Armstrong Brownlee

Contributed by Lois Brownlee



Death and Burial of
Margaret J. Armstrong Brownlee

Wife of Ebenezer Brownlee II
Born 9 August 1842
Died 20 September 1883 of "consumption" Pueblo, Colorado
Buried Pueblo Pioneer Cemetery, 20th-22nd Streets and Montezuma Lot 11 Block 16.
Cemetery was established 1870, and is reportedly the "oldest cemetery in Colorado."

Margaret Armstrong Brownlee died six months after her husband died, of the same disease, tuberculosis.
Husband Ebenezer Brownlee is buried Mineral Creek Cemetery near Warrensburg, Missouri.
Mother of Harry S. Brownlee, my grandfather, who is buried in the North Page Cemetery, Page County, Iowa

Three and a half months before her death Margaret Brownlee wrote her sister Beulah she was suffering from chills, fever and smothering feelings, common symptoms for TB patients near death.

Her postcard to Beulah was mailed from South Pueblo, which would have been a short walk across the Arkansas River from where she lived, at 2nd and West streets in a house owned by a Mr. Bryson. He probably ran a boarding house for "lungers" as tuberculosis victims were called in those days. The house at 2nd and West streets where she lived and died is no longer there. Those streets are now part of a truck/railroad car loading area, a busy commercial/industrial area just west of downtown Pueblo.

Margaret Armstrong Brownlee died at Mr Bryson's home 20 September 1883. Her death was reported to authorities a week later on September 27, 1883, according to the local paper, the Pueblo Chieftain.

She likely died indigent. But because she apparently had relatives who had fought in the Civil War her burial was looked after by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Women's Relief Corp, the women's auxiliary of the GAR. They arranged for her to be buried in their plot in the cemetery, then called Northside Cemetery, and later renamed the Pueblo Pioneer Cemetery. It's located at 20th-22nd streets and Montezuma in northwest Pueblo. Margaret is buried in Lot 11, Block 16 according to information from, among others, Mr. Marvin Stuart, Mountain View Cemetery, Pueblo, Colorado. His information was gratefully received and proved to valuable and reliable information of great help in locating where M.J. Armstrong Brownlee is buried. He also offered maps of the plot where she is buried. Records indicated there was a tombstone marking her grave, but it has since been destroyed by vandals.

Margaret Armstrong Brownlee would have been fighting the disease that took her life for years and had likely exhausted not only her body, but her financial resources as well. She could have sold the Missouri farm, Harry's inheritance, for money to live on till her death, but she did not. She kept it for Harry to have when he was grown.

Margaret J. Armstrong Brownlee died alone in a rooming house for "lungers" in Pueblo, Colorado 20 September 1883. The end of her life would have been painful and unhappy. She died smothered to death by the tuberculosis she had battled for years. She was 41 years old.

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