These are the ancestors and descendants of John Brown and Joanna Dymock and  Peter Browne and Marion Dymock.  Two brothers married two sisters and both  families immigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1903.


John and Peter's father, Thomas Templeton Brown(e), added the 'e' to his 
name while living and teaching in Cheshire, England.   In West Wycombe, 
Buckinghamshire, he was the first headmaster of a new school built in 1874 to 
conform to new standards set out in the Education Act of 1871.  Tom and Pat 
Browne visited the school in 1978 and were shown his Daybook.  They noted that 
he signed his name both with and without the 'e' and that his handwriting 
differed depending on how he spelled it.  Peter kept the 'e' but John dropped 
it in Canada as he felt that people in Northern Ontario might think he 
was "putting on airs".   In April 2004, John's grandaughter, Joanne, visited 
West Wycombe and toured the still thriving elementary school almost one 
hundred and twenty-five years after it was built.


According to Peter, the Brown(e) family are descended from Clan Lamont. 
Family legend also says the family has ties to Clan Carmichael through 
Barbara Carmichael whose father was supposedly connected to the Earls of 
Hyndford.   In truth, this bit of history is seriously in doubt as Barbara 
came into the world "on the wrong side of the sheets", according John Brown 
and no record of her birth has ever been found.  There are also ties to Clan 
Grant through Barbara's husband, Duncan Grant, supposedly a son of one of the clan 
chiefs.


In a letter written to his daughter Margaret in May 1935, John Brown tells 
her that the family was in Northern Ireland at the Siege of Londonderry in
1689.


In November 1881, Thomas Browne, Sr., and his two older sons, John and Thomas 
Albyn Browne, set sail for South Africa where Thomas Sr. was to take up a post as 
Headmaster of Cape Town Boys School.    His son John, who had been pupil teaching in 
Berkshire the previous year, was to continue his pupil teaching at his father's 
school.    We know the date of their departure from a letter written by John to his 
daughter Margaret in the 1930s in which he tells her that they left a few days after 
his eighteenth birthday which was on November 6th, 1881.    We know that John was 
pupil teaching in Berkshire from the 1881 Census of England which was taken on April 
3rd, 1881.    John became estranged from his father soon after their arrival in South 
Africa and nothing is known of Thomas, Sr. after that time.    Although John 
eventually returned to Scotland, his brother, Thomas Albyn Browne, married and stayed 
in South Africa and John and Peter lost touch with him around the time that their two 
families immigrated to Canada in 1903.     


Information on the family of Thomas Albyn Browne, John and Peter's brother, was 
researched for us by a professional genealogist in South Africa.    He was able to 
use one tiny bit of information that came our way quite serendipitously.    This was 
the index reference for the Deceased Estate File of Thomas Albyn Browne found in the 
Records Office in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.    The Last Will & Testament gave 
us the maiden name of his wife, Louisa Caroline Perry, and the names of his children.    
This also led to finding the family of his son, John Albyn Browne.    Information on 
his burial place came from the funeral notice in the Durban newspaper.    


Little is known of the Dymocks other than they came from Normandy and 
were Standard Bearers for William the Conquerer at Hastings in 1066.   
Margaret Dymock was six months pregnant with Joanna when her husband, John 
Dymock, died, leaving her to raise three children alone.   Six years later she 
married Thomas Paris, a widower twenty-five years her senior.   They had no 
children.  Thomas Paris died in 1900 and Margaret immigrated to Canada with 
her daughters in 1903.   She moved with John and Joanna to Sturgeon Falls 
where John managed the supply depot for The George Gordon Lumber Company and 
died there in October 1909 just after her granddaughter, Jean, was born.


P.C.Browne was a trained artist who established a church decorating 
business in Canada that was to continue through three generations of Brownes.  
He was educated at the Hamilton Grammer School, Hamilton Scotland, where he 
later taught Art and Art's Relationship to Architecture.   He won the Queen's 
Prize from the Department of Science and Art of the Committee of Her Majesty's 
Most Honourable Privy Council on Education, Kensington, London in May of 1890.


In Canada, the decorative work of the Browne family has received due 
recognition.   In the Photo Album you will see a water colour rendering of a 
proposal for the decoration of the Church of Our Lady in Guelph.   In 1907 His 
Eminence Mgr. Sbaretti called it the best example of Gothic decoration that he 
had seen in the country.   Unfortunately this work was over painted in the 
1960's.   In Cobourg the Local Architectural Conservation Committee erected a 
plaque at St. Michael's R.C.Church commemorating the family's work.   In 
February 1994, the Canadian Federal Ministry of Heritage recognised the 
Browne's work by placing a commemorative plaque at St. Jude's Anglican Church, 
Brantford, designating it as a National Historic and Architectural Site.


In the Photo Album, please view the separate album of P.C.Browne's church art.   
This will be added to as more of the churches are visited and more photographs are 
obtained.