“Sarah (Hoag) Brownell, wife of Simeon Brownell, died at Pittstown, Rensselaer County, March 18, 1849 in the eighty-sixth year of her age. Sarah Hoag Brownell, relict of Simeon Brownell, for many years a respected member of the Society of Friends, the deceased for more than sixty years, resided over a large household training up her children in habits of industry and economy and practicing the simple open handed hospitality of the society to which she belonged. Her descendants were numerous - she had fifteen children, of whom eleven survive to venerate her memory, 102 grandchildren and about twice that number of great grandchildren; she died in the hope of the Gospel - ‘The memory of the just is blessed’.”755

After 1814:
She learned to read and write after she was fifty years of age.756

After 1839:
Sarah wrote the following after she was 75 years old:756

By these lines, you may see,
What has happened unto me
When I was in my fourteenth year
Then I lost my mother dear.

It was a hard thing, to be sure;
I thought too hard for me to endure.
But hard things will be made light
If we only take them right.

I being young, and that is true,
The business came to me to do.
It was not long before I did find
A friend, according to my mind.

And with him, I did agree,
And bound myself before I was free.
When we are bound we must obey
And go where’ere our husband say.

If it is in some distant land,
We must go at their command.
By the men it has been said
Of the wife they would be head.

Where there is a head it wants a neck no doubt,
for to turn the head about.
When it is turned about to take a view
It begins to see what to do.

Then we came in this country
Some land for to see.
We had a horse worth twenty pounds,
And for some land we paid it down.

When we moved and got up here,
I was in my twenty-first year.
Two children we had before we come
And here it made us a little home.

The worst of all when we got here
Grain was scarce and very dear.
We had money enough to buy one bushel of corn;
We had no more when that was gone.

Then he went out to work by the day.
When he got money, he went away;
He went away for to buy
Some corn or some rye.

When he came home to me did say,
I have found no grain for bread today.
But tomorrow I will try once more;
I have heard of some corn in Rennsellear’s store.

This is the way that we begun.
Next fall we had another son.
After that first year was gone
We was blest with enough all along.

Enough, I say, with prudent care,
To bring up our children, and something to spare.
We had to work very hard,
But that we did not regard.

We have brought you up and you may see
That you have got to wait on me.
To wait on me, and your father too,
For that is your duty so to do.

Fourteen children I hope we have
And one we have buried in the grave.
If they all prove good and very kind
That will satisfy my mind.

Now, dear children, if you take the care
You will have all we have to spare.
Now I write as I do feel
Unto the Good Master we must yield.

There are another 12 verses that admonish her children to be obedient “unto Him” and repeat scripture.

1844:
“A letter to one of her daughters, dated December 30, 1844, is in possission of one of her great-granddaughters and says: ‘I am now at Nathan’s, and have been here a week, and they have a young daughter about eight weeks old, which makes a hundred and one grandchildren.”756