Clara Brown

(b. Tennessee 1803-d. Denver 1885; b. Riverside Cemetery)

A woman who faced down adversity and racial prejudice with her faith in humanity and God was Clara Brown. "Aunt" Clara Brown, as she was affectionately called, was born a slave. When asked late in life about her age, she recollected being a "good-sized girl" during the War of 1812. She was sold as a young woman to a Kentucky planter, George Brown, whose last name she borrowed.

"When did you see your husband last, Aunt Clara?" asked a reporter for the Denver Tribune Republican on June 26, 1885. She rocked back slowly in her chair and replied, "I don’t remember just when. He was sold nearly thirty years ago. I don’t know where they took him. I had four children, too, darlin.’ They sold them, too."

"Wasn’t that a dreadful time for your, Aunt Clara?"

"I thought it was, honey. But oh, child, just think how our Blessed Lord was crucified. Think how He suffered. My little sufferings were nothing, honey, and the Lord gives me strength to bear up under them. I am not complaining."

Clara’s faith was rewarded when the Kentucky planter helped her obtain her freedom. He also helped her to get to Missouri, where free slaves were protected by law. Her St. Louis employer emigrated to Kansas, where she joined a wagon train headed to Colorado. Having no money for passage, she earned her way by cooking. In June of 1859, she became the first African-American woman to reach the Colorado gold fields.

Aunt Clara joined the stream of fortune seekers headed up Clear Creek to Central City, where the first great gold strike had been made on May 6, 1859. In Central, she opened a shop as a laundress, worked hard, and saved money. Although then almost 60, she also took in needy black people. In 1879, when she was nearly 80, she traveled to Kansas to help out poor black "exodusters" relocated on Kansas farms from the South. In 1882, she finally found her long lost daugher Eliza Jane, who had been sold into slavery as a girl and helped her relocate to Iowa.

Aunt Clara Brown passed away in her sleep in October of 1885. Funeral arrangements were taken care of by the Colorado Pioneer Association, which had made her its first Negro member. She is commemorated by a stained-glass window in the Colorado State Capitol, by a chair in the Central City Opera House.

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