I knew my grandfather Sandy Brown (Alexander Chadbourne Brown) from just after I was born on 31 December 1960 until he died in ~1987 (1985?). My mother, Janie MacLeod, brother, Sandy MacLeod (b. 5 Oct 1964), and I would visit Granny and Grandpa in Cincinnati, Ohio, from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s many years in the spring, flying there, first I think from Boston, Massachusetts (Lexington, MA, then from Cambridge, MA, then Boston), until around 1966, then from New Haven, Connecticut (Hamden, CT), until about 1971, then from Washington DC (Bethesda, MD) until about 1974, then from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until the second half of the 1970s. My grandfather, Sandy Brown, was a chemical engineer at Emory Industries in Cincinnati, OH, for much of his career, with around 9 patents to his name, in 'fatty acids.' He was born in Boulder, Colorado, spent some of his elementary school years in Vinton, Iowa, after his mother died in Boulder, Colorado, after childbirth in having my great "Aunt Marf," Martha Brown Briscoe, his youngest sister, when Sandy Brown was around 6 years old. Grandpa Sandy Brown went to Phillips Academy Exeter in New Hampshire for at least high school, then to MIT for 2 degrees, spending some time studying in Germany, and then studied I think at Carnegie Tech or the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, PA (having some Scottish ancestry, I think - and possibly significantly). He played classical piano beautifully. He and my Granny Brown were members of the Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, for around 40s years. I recall visiting Grandpa and Granny in their house on Belmont avenue, in Cincinnati, OH, and then in their house on Fairview avenue also in Cincinnati. Both houses had a piano, oriental rugs, and were comfortable and lovely and homey in many ways. My grandfather was an engineer, a chemical engineer, and very knowledgeable about chemistry, geology, and many other sciences (which he had studied at MIT and Exeter, I think), and classical music. He also raised bees, was a gardener, and the Browns had a goat named Nancy Clancy on Belmont avenue. He was a quiet and thoughtful man, and particularly in relation to my talkative grandmother, his wife, whom I have called an 'oral historian' because of her nonstop talking. My grandfather, Sandy Brown, visited the MacLeods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a number of times, after the 4 of us (the MacLeod family) moved to Pittsburgh in 1974, from the Washington DC area (from Bethesda, Maryland, on West Parkhill Drive near the National Institute of Health - NIH), and my father, GKM MD, became a professor of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as taught 'Grand Rounds' in Pitt's medical school. Grandpa Sandy was very forbearing (politely or patiently restrained in an impulse to do something), possibly regarding my grandmother's loquaciousness. Both Granny and Grandpa were born in originally from Boulder, Colorado, so in a sense they were US westerners, before my grandfather spent time growing up in NE Iowa, probably from around 1905 to the mid-1910s, before he went to New England, and first to Boarding School at Phillips Academy Exeter in NH in the 1910s, and then to Cambridge, MA, at MIT around 1920, and studied there in the early 1920s. With my grandfather's tweed jackets, and his gray pants, and white shirts, with a slide ruler in his pocket (which I inherited) - chemical engineering clothes - (and my father's GKM MD's tweed jackets, and suit coats), both my grandfather ACB and father GKM MD wore kind of New England academic and intellectual clothes. I recall going out in the early early morning or similar to see eclipses with my grandfather and family, cutting a hole in a box to see the image of the eclipse in the back of the box, so as not to look at the sun, in order to not hurt the eyes. I recall also going to the 'half dome' architectural feature in the Pittsburgh train station and exploring its interesting acoustic and sound transmitting and focalizing properties. I recall going to see state parks with Indian mounds in Ohio and similar, and to learn about their Indian cultures archaeologically. I recall going on many many museum visits in Cincinnati, and to the Museum of Natural History and Art museums there with my grandfather (and grandmother). My grandfather was a scientific knowledge-oriented thinker, a MIT engineer, and knew the 'hard sciences' - and chemistry and 'fatty acids' for example - from a 1920s' MIT perspective, and developed this knowledge in his career as, I think, the main engineer at Emory Industries in Cincinnati, OH, for much of his adult life. (Brainstorming-wise, in what ways will we be able to bring back Grandpa Sandy Brown as a virtual avatar bot with artificial intelligence and machine learning and to be able to talk with him in the future, and for genealogical questions and conversation (e.g. with artificial intelligence AI and natural language processing NLP) too? Am exploring related questions further in my blog -
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/SGKMacLeod%20family%20history and
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/avatar%20agency) - Scott GK MacLeod (W, May 24, 2023 -
http://scottmacleod.com/family.htm -
http://scottmacleod.com/ScottMacLeodFamilyHistory.htm)