Many years ago I remembered seeing
"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in the theater. (1960) It
had a measurable effect on me, in that it showed me a lady who
was resilient and able to withstand public rejection, no matter
what. My favorite phrase out of the movie (of hers) was: "I
ain't down 'til I say I'm down, and I ain't never gonna say I'm
down." Due to a lot of ups and downs in my personal life
this became a beacon to me in a lot of tough times. So, when we
got near Hannibal Missouri and Bob said that he wanted to see the
boyhood home of Mark Twain, I said "yes" very quickly
because I wanted to see the birthplace of Margaret Tobin-Brown.
In looking at her birthplace and reading the "actual"
life of Margaret Brown (who by the way had never been known as
Molly in her lifetime) I realized that a great deal of what I had
heard was manufactured by the news media of her day.
Unfortunately in the late 1800's they didn't have excellent
"news" manufacturers (ah media) like the Star, the
Globe, etc. So the "regular" newspapers and the
paperback publications had to create the excitement for people.
Margaret Brown not unlike Belle Starr of an earlier era, became a
source of stories for the writers looking for a way to sell
information to the public. However, the greatest source of
misinformation seems to be the writer of the musical and later
movie called "The Unsinkable Molly Brown." It was he
who dubbed her Molly (a nickname by the way that Margaret wanted
to be called in her lifetime instead of Maggie.)
When we look at Margaret's early beginnings we see a small house
in Hannibal Missouri that her parents had. Her parents had
emigrated from Ireland and were what were termed "shanty
Irish." Each had one child apiece when they married, and
ended up having three more. Margaret, like many of us, looked
around and decided that there had to be more to life than what
she saw in Hannibal and started looking for a way to improve her
lot in life.
When Margaret's brother, Daniel, left Hannibal for Leadville
Colorado, she saw an opportunity to better herself and followed
shortly. While in Leadville she met and married a man by the name
of James J. Brown, who was the manager of a nearby Silver Mine.
They moved to Stumptown which was closer to the mines. Sometime
later Jim (who was known as Johnny in the musical and movie) was
instrumental in discovering gold in one of the mines after the
silver panic of 1893. As a result of this, the owners of the mine
gave him a 1/8 partnership. When this happened they moved from
Leadville to a brownstone-with-granite-trim house in Denver with
their two children, Lawrence and Helen. Later they bought a house
called "the house of lions". After they arrived in
Denver Margaret set about trying to enter the society of the
"sacred 36". The cream of Denver society. It's funny
when you look back on it now, and think "nothing like that
could happen today." But even today we have our cliques in
society that shun "outsiders". I saw this in a small
town in the mid-west that refused to employ someone because they
were not third generation residents.
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