Musings
~ by Mark Blackwell waves of migration
I
used to live in a place between Lake Lemon and Lake Monroe, directly in the path of migrating sandhill cranes, Canada geese, and other winged creatures. It made for interesting autumns and springs. The overhead honking and whooping were auditory announcements that the seasons were changing.
I enjoyed hearing honks and looking into the sky to see the“ V” pattern of the geese. Sometimes when I heard the cranes, I would search for them in the sky, but they would fly so high that they couldn’ t be detected by sight. Their presence was perceived only by their faint fading calls. I was glad I lived in the path of north- and south-bound birds and not in the way of some other creatures like buffalo or elk.
But it isn’ t just our animal brothers and sisters that migrate, human beings have a propensity to wander around, as well. In the far recesses of our past, people migrated north out of Africa. Then there were migrations from east to west by the Huns and Scythians. In Biblical times, Moses led the Hebrew children on a 40-year migration into and around the wilderness of the Middle East.
As soon as the Europeans could engineer ocean-going vessels, they continued the east-to-west migration to a“ new world.” But that new land had already been settled by folks migrating from west-to-east. All this got me to thinking about Brown County. After all this thinking on a grand scale, it is worthwhile to shrink things down and look at migration from a smaller historical viewpoint. First off, Brown County has only existed as a legal entity for less than 200 years. But in that time period it has seen at least five distinct waves of migration by humans.
The first would be Native Americans. We know they came and explored and hunted this area but there is scant evidence that they established any lasting settlements. There was an early German pioneer named Johann Schoonover, who lived somewhere in the valley named for him( later shortened to Schooner) and reportedly traded with Native Americans.
Next, came the permanent settlers. The first of whom, in 1820, was William Elkins. Others followed. By 1836, when Brown County was officially established, there were around 2,000 settlers, more or less. This population was scattered
34 Our Brown County July / August 2026