Tiny street in Salem pays tribute to popular ex-slave

Strotter Brown is best known for
making baskets.

By D.A. WILKINSON

VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU

SALEM — After the Civil War, a poor ex-slave rode into Salem on his white mare, Jenny.

“When he came, he had nothing but his horse,” said Dr. James McQuilkin, a retired Salem dentist who is active in the Western Columbiana County Historical Society in Homeworth.

Now, some 94 years after his death, Strotter Brown has a street named after him and bronze signs to memorialize his life.

The city recently installed “Strotter Brown Avenue” signs on what was formerly Water Avenue. It runs north and south for one block between the Salem Public Library and the Memorial Building. City council approved the change.

A former client of Dr. McQuilkin, Virginia Worman of Salem, suggested the tribute.

The bronze signs — one at each end of the street — are on the library’s property.

“The plaque tells who he was and what he stood for,” Dr. McQuilkin said.

The plaques read in part, “He personified the American dream: strength of character, a strong work ethic and pride in self, community and country.”

Dr. McQuilkin said, “He never really had any money. He pulled himself up.”

Brown met Franklin H. Bentley, a Union soldier from Salem, in Virginia during the Civil War. Brown gave Bentley some of his good, homegrown tobacco.

It’s not clear if Bentley told Brown to look him up after the war, or if the soldier mentioned Salem’s strong opposition to slavery and its many stops on the Underground Railroad.

David Stratton, the director of the Salem Historical Society, said, “A friendly gesture can be remembered. The friendship made an impact on him.”

For whatever reason, Brown came to Salem when he was about 50 years old.

McQuilkin noted that was about the average life expectancy of the times. But Brown had about 50 more years to live.

He built a shack off what is now Elm Street on the city’s west side. He raised tobacco and vegetables and made baskets that are collectibles. In return for work, he would accept oats for Jenny.

Stratton said Brown was always friendly, and popular, like other people through the years, as a town character.

A photograph of Brown in Salem City Hall shows him wearing a bowler hat and a long coat in front of a shack.

When his first shack burned down, his friends built him another dwelling.

Brown couldn’t write his name. When he made a basket, he signed it with a small V-shaped notch in the handle, McQuilkin said.

The likeness of Brown on the plaques comes from a drawing of Brown made by the late Salem artist Edmund Sullivan. McQuilkin said that Sullivan used a postcard with a photograph of Brown as the basis of his drawing.

It was common in the early 1900s for people to have their photo taken and put on a postcard that was mailed with a personal greeting, to family or friends.

Nora Rock, who along with her husband, Don, operate Logue Monument of Salem, said they obtained the image as rendered by Sullivan and sent it with the text to the company that made the plaques.

The Pearce Foundation of Salem, a private, nonprofit corporation, paid the $6,400 cost of the plaques.

As Brown grew older, he did not want to go to the Columbiana County Home, that era’s nursing home.

McQuilkin said there’s a story that the county sheriff told Brown he had to sign some papers in Lisbon — and dropped him off at the home, where he died Jan. 12, 1913, about 100 years old.

Stratton said photos were taken of Brown, but probably weren’t placed on postcards until after Brown’s death. The postcards were printed in Germany, Stratton said, so his friends could sell them to make money for a monument for Brown at Hope Cemetery.

The monument includes a tiny stone basket, where people still leave coins for Brown.

wilkinson@vindy.com