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This cabinent card portrait of Percy Whiting Brown (sp?) was taken in 1891. It was taken at the Emerson studio in Lowell, Massachusetts. Although unusually for an American cabinet, the state is not indicate on the card moung. Percy looks was 4 years old ehen the portrait as takenm. There is an inscription on the back in ink script "Percy Whiting (Brown?) and dated 1891 with the notation "My first pants!". This means that Percy was just breeched. We do not know how he was dressed before he was breeched. We suspect this was the headwear he wore with a kilt suit or other skirted garment. He wears a knee pants sailor suit with a light-colored scarfe. He has a tam instead of a sailor cap or hat. There is a pocket in the middy blouse with a hanfkerchief. He has his hands in his pocket, unusual in these portraits. This shows us how the pants were constructed in period knee pants. His long stockings seem rather heavy, I supose understandable for a northern state with a cold climate. You can't see Percy's hair very well because of the tam, but it looks to be cut with bangs. The cabinent card mount was black with gold script. This appears to have been a popular style in the 1890s. Also note the stand to help Percy hold steady. He is also leaning against the chair. We seen these stands quite commonly in earlier cabinent cards, but they were less common by the 1890s.
Thanks to Percy's granddaughter, we know a great deal about Percy and how he grew up. . He was born on 21 January 1887 and died 8 December 1958. So he was 4 at the time of the photograph. He grew up in Concord, Mass. In fact his family was great friends with another famous Concord resident, Louisa May Alcott, the author of 'Little Women’, and Alcott gave Percy’s mother Florence Whiting Brown a baby book with her initials inscribed on it, which I still have. Percy’s grandmother, Laura Whiting (later Hosmer), was Lousia May Alcott’s personal doctor and great friend. I can give you more information on the Brown-Alcott connection if you’d like. Percy was a great follower of Ralph Waldo Emerson, another famous Concord resident. Percy’s father Charles Edward Brown owned a dry goods store on Main Street in Concord for many years. Florence Whiting Brown, Percy’s mother, was from a prominent New England family who descended from Puritans. Indeed Percy’s middle name, (and indeed my middle name) is Whiting, which is from the Reverend Samuel Whiting, who was an early settler to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Samuel Whiting and his wife, Elizabeth St John, landed in Boston in 1632 and he founded Lynn, Mass, and was their rector there for many years until his death. The Whitings were spoken of often in my father’s family. Percy was an only child. His birth had been a difficult one, and his mother converted to Christian Science during his birth, as he was a giant of a baby. He grew up to be a very tall man, about 6’6”. He had a very happy childhood in Concord and, when he was 13, at the summer cottage in the Berkshires that his parents bought in 1900. Our family still owns this cottage. Percy attended the Milton Academy in Milton, Mass, and then went to Harvard University, graduating in 1908. I believe he majored in Architecture. I think my uncle and father told me he signed up for World EWasr I, and started basic training, but he was already 29 when the US entered the war and so he was a little too old. So he didn’t serve. He became a stock broker for Hornblower & Weeks, and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1920s after his first wife died to set up the Cleveland branch of H & W. H & W was later taken over by Merrill Lynch. He married my grandmother, Helen Campbell Hurd, in 1930. Helen was also a New Englander, from Newburyport, MA, but had moved to Cleveland during the ‘boom years’ of the 1920s. They had two sons: Roger Hamilton Brown in 1931 and my father, Edward Randolph Brown, in 1933. Percy and Helen raised their boys in Cleveland, Ohio, and my father stayed until his death in 2015. Percy became a successful businessman and and supported many local charities and events, including the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. He died of a heart attack at the age of 70 on 8 December 1958, five years before I was born. He is buried in the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, near his parents, grandparents, and other relatives. It is a source of sadness to me that I never knew Percy, and that he never knew my father got married and had two children. His giant personality comes through me through my late father and uncle, though, and I think of Percy often. As you can see, I am very interested in family history and am in the process of compiling a record of my family’s history for future generations.
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