In the summer of 2000, I attended the ANA convention in Philadelphia. On August 9, I visitedthe Fourth Philadelphia Mint, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I could have spent thefollowing day on the bourse floor shopping for coins. Instead, I joined Carl Herkowitz, his wifeBarbara, and Scott Rubin on an adventure. We drove up a narrow winding road to theunincorporated village of Palm, Pennsylvania, looking for the burial place for Ard Browning.

I had commented in 1993 about my inability to do a biography of Browning. Very little wasknown of him before Herkowitz contributed an article to the July 1997 issue of The Asylum, Herkowitz was a colorful writer who couldcreate a five-page article out of one census listing.

He later contributed a follow-up article in the Fall 2000 issue of The Asylum, In this he laid out some of the basic facts of the life of Browning.

Ard Browning was born in Chicago on January 12, 1869. He was the son of William H.Browning and Mary Virgil of Dayton, Ohio. Carl was unable to locate a birth certificate.

A 1905 New York census has Browning living as a lodger in Manhattan.In the 1910 Census, he was listed as a lodger and bookkeeper for a plumbing firm in New York.

Browning was employed as a stenographer at the Central Islip State Hospital for fifteen yearsfrom l918 to 1933.

Browning joined the ANA in February 1925 as member 2791 with an address of a P. O. Box inCentral Islip, Long Island, New York.

It was also in 1925 when Browning's book, Early Quarter Dollars of the United States, waspublished by Wayte Raymond. He came from obscurity and returned to obscurity afterpublication. There has even been speculation that his name was made up to conceal the realauthor.

He died on May 24, 1933, at the age of 64. He is buried in the cemetery behind theSchwenkfelder Church in Palm Pennsylvania, next to his younger brother Charles V. Browning(1871-1957) and his wife, Annie. That's where we found him on August 10, 2000.

That's where the story stood until October 26, 2023, when I made the next big discovery. It takesa bit of an explanation. The FamilySearch site is a great source for biographical research. Itincludes copies of original records like census records.

Users of the site can link records to a family tree. These are not verified original documents andmay be subject to error. This is true of the Browning discovery but I trust it is correct.

The later records for Ard W. Browning are linked to an 1880 Census listing for Ard W.Bolenbaugh, age eleven and born in Illinois. He is the son of William Harrison Bolenbaugh(1839-1906) listed as a house carpenter, and Mary N. Virgil Bolenbaugh (1844-1897). Also listedis a younger brother, Charles V. (1872- ), age eight. The Bolenbaugh names line up completelywith the names listed for the Browning family.

William was a Civil War veteran. William and Mary Bolenbaugh remained married and areburied under the Bolenbaugh name in Galesburg, Kansas. A 1957 obituary for Charles V.Browning indicates that he was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but does not mention his parents.The mother and father are linked to several generations of ancestors. There is no Ard amongthose ancestors.

This is evidence that Ard changed his name and the reason why Carl Herkowitz could not find abirth certificate. It is curious that Ard and Charles both changed their names for reasons thatremain a mystery.

One other Ard Browning appears in the FamilySearch records. He was born in January of 1836and a Mississippi farmer in the 1900 Census. He had a son, J. S. Browning, born in 1869, thesame year as Ard Bolenbaugh. There is no apparent connection between the two.

In 1917, the British House of Saxe-Coburn-Gotha was renamed as the House of Windsor tobreak ties with their German ancestry. Perhaps the Bolenbaugh name became uncomfortable andthe sons preferred the more English name of Browning. I have been looking for answers formore than thirty years and those answers are being revealed slowly.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
ARD W. BROWNING ANA PILGRIMAGE PLANNED(https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v03n32a04.html)