Brownie Castle is at 125 Elgin St. Victoria Park Granby, Quebec 32G 4V4 Canada
Cartoonist, children's writer and illustrator. They called him "The Brownie Man"
"I was brought up in an old Scottish settlement, and the people had a quaint notion of a Brownie who was supposed to attach himself to each particular household and help the old folks do odd jobs when nobody was looking. That was the idea which I developed." Palmer Cox
PALMER COX 1840-1924
They said he drew brownies on the uprights of the barns he helped to build in Granby, Quebec, Canada, where he was born.
Palmer Cox was a tall, rugged, warm-hearted man with a great talent; a devoted Mason who loved children. He created characters based on the brownie gnome and dressed them in costumes representing different nationalities and professions. He authored and illustrated stories about their helpful activities in children's books and a magazine called St. Nicholas. His books sold over a million copies. With the composer Malcolm Douglas, he wrote, produced and directed a musical show that ran for five years on broadway and around the world.
The Brownie character was popular for thirty years, especially in the 1890's. It was the first character in America to have its own line of packaged products, and advertised a variety of products, including the Brownie Camera.
Brownies In The Tub with Ivory Soap Proctor & Gambel one of the first to sign a licensing agreement.
Brownies like best to hide under tree roots and within their rotting stumps. When much of their forest was cut down, perhaps they moved into the adjoining farmhouses. Was one such the home of a famous man in the land of Canada?
It was a time when horse-drawn carriages rolled over rough and dusty roads; when women wore long dresses with bustles and flounces and donned enormous hats with feathers, flowers and birds; when gentlemen in high top hats flung their heads back smartly, stretched their necks in high stiff collars, fastened their wide silk ties with jeweled stickpins, and carried gloves and walking sticks. It was when mothers dressed their boys in sailor suits, and their little girls in tucked pinafores. like Alice In Wonderland." M.E. Heller
When Cox was ready to retire and have a place in the country as an alternative to his Broadway studio in New York City, he built a seventeen room manor house in Granby to look like a Scottish castle. It boasted an octagonal tower from whose battlements flew a brownie flag. A brownie weathervane twirled in the wind, and a brownie stained glass window stood at the bottom of the principal stairway. There was a barn as well, modern for its day. It housed every kind of farm animal, and the latest farm machinery.
Palmer Cox and the Brownies represent a bridge between the nineteenth Century and the modern age........Wayne Morgan: Now Brownies Seldom Idle Stand ..Palmer Cox the Brownies, and Curiosity
copyright 2006 Martha E. Heller All rights Reserved
Chinese Brownie
Brownies on the camera box
PALMER COX
The Walt Disney of the Victorian Age
