Browder, Isham Bell

Isham Bell Browder and Lucy Breeze Browder
From Proud Heritage, Vol 1 by DCPA. This 300 page hardcover book is available online.

The fourth Isham Bell Browder, born in 1827 in Chariton County, Missouri, was a seventh generation American and first generation Texan. He was the second son of Pleasant Browder and Lucy Jane Monroe Browder, niece and ward of President James Monroe.

Isham came to Rylie Prairie (Peters Colony) in 1845 with his widowed mother and his older brother, Edward Cabell, a surveyor. All three had land grants from Peters Colony; and after securing his, Isham returned to Missouri to marry the girl who was waiting for him, Lucy Ann Breeze. They were eager to go to Texas, but a couple could not make that trip alone in winter, so they had to wait for a wagon train to form. This delay suited the Browders; a son was born in January 1847. When their wagon train left in late summer, streams and rivers had run down and fording the Arkansas and Red Rivers was done without too much difficulty and delay.

In December they camped at the settlement of Cedar Springs, where the wagon train broke up, and the Browders went on to Rylie Prairie to live for five years. In 1852 the plat of Dallas was surveyed and they moved to Browder Springs, just outside of town.

Their second son, James Patterson, born before they made the move, was the fore-bearer of the present-day Browder family members still in Dallas: Eugene Browder, grandson, and his two sons; Marjori Gibson Sharp, granddaughter, and her son and two daughters. Isham's brother, Edward, surveyed much of Dallas and the two brothers engaged in hauling freight from Jefferson, including much of the lumber being used for houses in Dallas. Edward built his home on Commerce Street, where the Santa Fe passenger station stood for many years and where the first unit of the Santa Fe building now stands. He used the best materials available, squared cedar logs, and before the Civil War he had made it a rather pretentious home for those days, covered with clapboard from Jefferson. Edward was the first District Clerk for Dallas, from 1850 to 1864, became County Clerk in 1872, and was the first secretary of the Dallas County Pioneer Association, which he helped organize in 1875.

Isham didn't live long enough to make much Dallas history. Never a rugged man, he became ill in the summer of 1862 while serving in the army, made it home to Dallas in September, and died in October. Both Browders had joined Company C of the Eighteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment (Darnell's Regiment) when it was organized in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, with Edward as Captain. He commanded Company C throughout the War and sent his younger brother home on an indefinite furlough when his condition worsened from dysentery and malaria..

He did, however, contribute his name to Browder Springs, the first water source for the City of Dallas, which played an important role in the early development of the City as a railway center. A little sleight-of-hand by the Dallas representative to the Legislature resulted in the routing of the east-and-west-running Texas and Pacific Railroad within one mile of Browder Springs, to cross the already-established Houston and Texas Central Railroad, running north and south.

After the War, Texas, which had suffered less than almost any other state of the Confederacy, recovered quickly. Her cities and homes had not been ravaged, and disheartened people from all over the South flocked to her to make a new start. Dallas grew rapidly and prospered, and Edward Browder prospered with it. He and his mother opened the first residential addition to the City, "The Cedars", also known as "Browders Addition", and Lucy Jane Monroe Browder became known as Dallas' first businesswoman. Only Browder Street, a nondescript little street in the oldest section of town, remains as evidence of their being.

Edward Cabell Browder died in 1878 and he, Isham Bell, and Lucy Jane Monroe, all were buried in the Masonic Cemetery, today known as Pioneer Park. Their graves have been graced with markers by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Isham's home, the first and for twenty-five years the only city park, at Browder Springs, is today the living cultural museum of Dallas, Old City Park.