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CECIL BERTRAM BROWN's story

This account has been adapted from "Browns of Kyeburn Peninsula" by Wally Brown - to whom many thanks



Cecil attended Otago Boys' School in Dunedin after which he was apprenticed as a carpenter. At the age of 16, below the required age limit, he enlisted in the 16th Reinforcement of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade as "Charles" Brown and left for duty in France on the "Narua" on 20th Aug 1916. Being wounded he was sent home, where he joined his father in the goldmining at Kyeburn Diggings until 1923.

At this time Cecil formed a partnership with his brother Bill on Bill's newly ballotted land at Mt Pisa Station. Then in 1934 he married Jean Swann, and they built a new home at Cromwell, not far from the 4B Ranch, as it was known. Jean's parents, Jack and Fanny Swann had an orchard in the Lowburn Valley where Jean, one of ten children, worked from the time she left school to her marriage. They had two children

About 1960, Cecil's health began to deteriorate and he sold out to his nephew, Vincent, and three years later Jean died. During the next couple of years Cecil went on two world tours, visiting old haunts in the battlefields of France and in London. On the second tour he met and married Sheila Stevenson frm Gore, and they lived in her house at Frankton for the rest of his life until he died in 1968.

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