Members of the family of Henry Brosius (1892-1866) who was born in Montgomery County and raised in Chester County, Pa. Brosius became a prominent business man and merchant in and around Kennett Square. His first wife, Hannah (Mercer) Brosius, died in 1837. He then married Rachel (Moore) Brosius in 1839. He abandoned the mercantile business and began farming in 1850. After farming in Christiana, Atglen and Penningtonville, he relocated to Alliance, Ohio, in 1858, where his 2nd wife and son Caleb from his first marriage died. He returned to Chester County and bought a farm in Russellville. He died in 1866. In addition to his business and agricultural pursuits, Henry Brosius was a reformer who advocated for abolition and temperance. It is believed that his home in Kennett Square was a stopping place for escaped slaves. Henry Brosius had seven children with his 2nd wife, of which six lived to adulthood. His first son Augustus (1840-1925) was educated in a private school in Salem, Ohio, where he also taught for one year. For eight years he split time between teaching and farming but moved back to Chester County to farm full time around 1868. After his marriage to Mary J. Hoopes in 1874, he farmed for one year near Smith's bridge in Delaware and then purchased a farm near Kennett Square where he and his wife resided for six years. In 1881 he was appointed Indian Agent for the Iowa, Sac, and Fox Indian tribes in eastern Nebraska and Kansas. An act of Congress ended his position as Indian agent in 1883 and he returned to Chester County where he worked for one year in real estate but then moved to the Pratt Hoopes Farm in London Grove Township, the childhood home of his wife, where he lived until his death in 1925. Augustus was a birthright member of the Society of Friends and an active member of the London Grove Monthly Meeting, of which he was an overseer and elder the later part of his life. Henry and Rachel Brosius third son, Albanus Brosius (1844-1905), was educated at the Eaton Academy and learned telegraphy at schools in Connecticut and Philadelphia. He worked for a time as a telegrapher. Later he was employed as a railroad agent for the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company in Wilkes Barre, Pa. He lived in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in the 1880s and died in New York City in 1905. He never married. The fifth child of Henry and Rachel was Addison Brosius (1847-1926). Not formally educated to the extent of his brothers, Addison spent much of his life in the western states, working as a laborer in the timber industry in Oregon and agriculture in California. He spent the last twelve years of his life in Avondale, Chester County, where he died in 1926. Evalina Brosius (1850-1901), the sixth child of Henry and Rachel, was educated in the public schools and Millersville Normal School. She taught for a number of years and relocated to Nebraska with her brother in 1881. Upon her return in 1883 she "kept house" and worked as a domestic for at least three different families in Baltimore, West Chester, and Chadd's Ford. In 1887 she married her last employer, William Pennock, and resided on a farm in Pennsbury Township, Chester County where she died in 1901. Samuel Martin Brosius (1851-1936), the youngest child of Henry and Rachel, was educated in private and public schools. He learned the trade of cabinet making and resided in Wilmington, Del. Around 1874 he accepted the position of licensed Indian trader at the Great Nemaha Indian Agency in Nebraska. The site at that time was administered by the Society of Friends under General Grant's Peace Policy. In 1879 he married an instructor at the agency, Jennie M. Walton, who died a year later. Due to changes in government policy around 1885 he lost his license as an Indian trader and moved to White Cloud, Kan., where he operated a hardware business with his cousin, Mahlon Brosius Kent (b. 1841). He moved back east in the 1890s and took a position at the Indian Rights Association in Washington D.C. In 1905 he received his law degree from George Washington University. He was married for a second time to Anna Mary Wilkinson in 1911. He died in 1936.
From the description of Brosius family correspondence, 1858-1890. (Chester County Historical Society Library). WorldCat record id: 650310428
