Lot Title

Location in Cemetery

Section: a     Lot: --     Grave: --

Date of death

Apr-2-1836

Date of birth

Apr-17-1811

Age

Verse (Legibility: G - GOOD)

Unspecified

Veteran Information

No War Periods Served

Veteran: No

Relatives

Unspecified

Stone Shape

Stone Decoration

Stone Condition

Stone Material

State of Stone

Other Information

. William Brawley was an Irish immigrant, born in Ireland in 1796. A laborer and a farmer, he moved to New Bedford in the early 1800s, before the great famine of the 1840s. He made his way to Westport, where he married Mariah Gifford, the daughter of Westport ship’s carpenter and farmer, Levi Gifford, and his wife, the former Prudence Brownell. Mariah was the eldest of the couple’s 10 children, having been born on April 16, 1811. William was 37 and Mariah was 22. They announced their intentions on September 1, 1833 and married on the 25th of September. A son, Levi William Brawley, was born in Tiverton, Rhode Island on September 4, 1835. It is likely that Mariah developed a chronic post-partum infection and never recovered. She died on April 2, 1836, just days before her 25th birthday. With a young son at home, William remarried shortly thereafter to Phebe, born in 1799, whose maiden name may also have been Gifford. The couple welcomed a daughter, Anna Maria, known as Ann, in 1838. She became a schoolteacher and lived with her parents until she married farmer George Read in June of 1864. The Brawleys and the Reads lived on Blossom Road “on the east side of the pond”, according to census and newspaper records. William Brawley saw his name published in the Fall River daily newspaper twice. The first occasion was an auspicious one, as he was petitioning the court to dismiss a fine of $10 which had been imposed on him for keeping an unlicensed dog in 1859. The second time was in noting his successful and impressive crop of green apples, some of which had grown to a mammoth 13 inches in diameter. At the conclusion of the Civil War, William and Phebe resided with his sister, Mary, his son, Levi, his wife, and their four young children. On June 11, 1870, William died in New Bedford of a cancerous tumor at age 74. His obituary noted that “the closing part of his illness was very painful, which he endured with uncommon resignation, frequently expressing to his wife, daughter, and sister, his appreciation of their sacrifices and attention to his wants and comfort.” His body was returned to Westport and buried alongside his first wife, Mariah. Phebe moved in with her daughter, Ann, her husband, George, and their three children, on Blossom Road, in Fall River. In 1881, Phebe penned her Last Will and Testament, leaving her estate to her daughter, Anna Maria Read, and, upon her demise, to her three grandchildren, her namesake, Phebe, Frank, and Walter Read. “She may have the use of said property and estate during her life free from the interference or control of her husband,” Phebe wrote of her daughter and son-in-law. Barnabas Blossom was appointed executor and trustee of her estate. Eighteen months later, Phebe Brawley died of “dysentery”, an intestinal infection that causes bloody diarrhea, dehydration, and, in the years before antibiotics, death. She died on August 10, 1882 at the age of 83. She joined William and his first wife, Mariah, in the private Brawley-Reynolds Cemetery. No record could be found of the death of Anna Maria Read. Her husband, George, died in 1917. William and Mariah Brawley’s son, Levi, was 52 years old when he died on May 12, 1888 of cancer of the face. - Todd Baptista

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