Margaret Brown: the Mine Angel of Ludlow
On April 20, 1914, violence broke out in Ludlow, Colorado as miners on strike were fired upon by the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The event came on the heels of months of contention between the two sides. Since the beginning of 1914, miners in Ludlow had been on strike…
Serve and Protect: Margaret Brown’s Ushabti
Picture this: you are an archeologist exploring an ancient tomb in Egypt. You are navigating dark tunnels painted with inscriptions of Gods and the afterlife, until suddenly, you find yourself in the heart of the pyramid itself. The tomb of a long-forgotten elite of the Egyptian world. How do you know that you have found…
Ask a Curator (and more!)
Everyone who comes to the museum undoubtedly has their favorite room, favorite picture, or favorite artifact. But what about the staff? We challenged our curator to answer this for Ask a Curator Day. We decided that our curator shouldn’t be the only one who got in on the fun, so we asked several members of…
Margaret’s Christmases Through the Years
Christmas in Hannibal, Missouri-Margaret’s Childhood Margaret Tobin (later Brown) celebrated her very first Christmas in Hannibal, Missouri. She was born in 1867, just after the Civil War, to hard working Irish immigrants John and Johanna Tobin. When Margaret was three years old, Christmas became a United States holiday. Christmas trees became popular in England and…
Margaret’s Mon Etui
While the Molly Brown House Museum, aka the House of Lions at 1340 Pennsylvania Avenue in Denver, is undeniably the most famous residence of Margaret Brown, this was not the only house which she spent her time in. After she separated from J.J. in 1909, Margaret not only traveled even more than she had before,…
A Model Citizenship: Doing Our Part in 1918 and in 2020
Armistice Day, 1918. Courtesy of Denver Public Library 102 years ago, a powerful strain of the flu swept the globe, infecting one third of the world’s population. Despite being called the Spanish Flu, is believed to have begun at US Army Camp Funston in Kansas earlier in 1918, and spread across the world via troop…
How the Brown’s Spent Thanksgiving
Giving thanks for a special event, for home and for family has a long tradition in the cultures across the world, but the American idea and tradition of Thanksgiving Day for Margaret Brown’s family and for many of us has evolved from simple proclamations of thanksgiving to God to an event centered around the home,…
A Lady Explorer, A Traveler in Skirts
“A lady explorer? A traveler in skirts? The notion’s just a trifle too seraphic: Let them stay and mind the babies Or hem our ragged shirts; But they mustn’t, can’t and shan’t be geographic.” Letter to the Royal Geographic Society, June 1893 Who was the Intrepid Woman Traveler? By the 19th century, a new…
“No Pink Tea”: Mrs. Brown for Senate
In Margaret Brown’s era, “Pink tea politics” suggested a frivolous engagement with political change, particularly among women of the upper classes of society. Progressive-era gatherings known as ‘pink teas’ were a socially acceptable way for women to organize and strategize in the pursuit of women’s rights, particularly the right to vote without the oversight or…
Upstairs, Downstairs: Servants in Colorado and 1340 Pennsylvania St.
“Servants of Mrs. Brown Poisoned”, reads a headline on page one of the May 7, 1904 edition of the Denver Times. “Five of the servants seriously ill from eating contaminated food but the family escaped any issues,” it continues. Sam Gleason, stable boy, Mary O’Fallon, cook, Annie Schleining, second girl, Sadie Johnson second girl, and…